Ties of Blood and Fire
by Blue Cichlid
Summary: Seven years after the end of the war, Jon Snow struggles with the demons of his past and withdraws into despair at the Wall. Meanwhile Sansa fights to maintain the peace at the court of Jon's brother Aegon, the dangerous and unpredictable Dragon King. Warnings for violence, major character death, and rape.
1. Chapter 1

Seven years had passed since Daenerys Stormborn had fallen from the sky in a blaze of fire, and Jon still saw her face when he closed his eyes like the flame of a blown out candle.

Seven years since he had died, murdered by those he had thought were his brothers, since he had been returned to life for a hopeless battle. He remembered the darkness and the cold and the grasping hands, the hunger and exhaustion of the defenders, too few and their numbers dwindling with every attack, their own lost dead risen and turned against them. He had known despair in those days that were one long night. And then the Mother of Dragons had come to him with all her armies behind her. As they fought together he had thought that his rebirth into this second life had been destined by all the prophecies and songs he had ever heard. But then she had died, and the singers said the war had been won, and he was left behind to wake and sleep and eat and prepare for the next war. Seven years.

He walked out of the forest, approaching Drogon's bones where they lay in the remnants of the battlefield just north of the Wall. Viserion's shadow loomed overhead. He could have soared over the forests on dragonback if he had wished, but he preferred to walk so that he could know the land. _How many years did the Others haunt these forests_, he wondered, _and the Night's Watch did not know they were there? How were we all so blind to the danger?_ He had sworn it would never happen again. The Wall was being rebuilt under the direction of a strong Lord Commander, and it already stood three hundred feet high. When the war came again, he had sworn, they would be ready.

As he moved through the cage of Drogon's ribs, he saw a rider approaching from the south. The boy was young, Jon saw as he drew near, and clad in the black of the Night's Watch with the silver bandings of a squire in training. The boy was not pledged for life, then. Accepting the service of men and boys pledged only for a time had been one of Jon's reforms. Someday this boy would return to his home in the south with tales of the Wall and the lands beyond, and the realm would be reminded of why the watch must be kept. Perhaps it would lessen the spirit of brotherhood, but Jon no longer had much faith in that, not since his once-brothers had freed him from his vows with the daggers in the dark.

"Your highness," the boy said. "Riders have come from the south. The Lady of Winterfell seeks to speak with you."

For a moment, Jon had the unsettling vision of Catelyn Stark appearing to chastise him for some misdemeanour. Not that there was that much difference, he thought, between the former Lady Stark and her elder daughter. In his capacity of Regent of the North he had granted Sansa the use of the title until Rickon married, in recognition of the work she did running Winterfell. He had not expected how much it would grate on him to hear it used.

"I will send a raven and tell the Lady that I have no time to fly to Winterfell." Not to mention that Sansa was not supposed to be at Winterfell. Their last exchange of letters had been heated, but he had made his orders clear.

"No, my lord, you misunderstand. She rode in several hours ago."

Jon's jaw dropped. "She's _here_?" Winterfell to the Wall was more than a two week ride in hard conditions. The way Sansa travelled it was far more likely to be over three weeks, and he could only imagine the escort she had thought necessary for the trip. Sansa did not travel light. He only hoped Sam was coping with the inundation. "At _Castle Black!_?" What had possessed her?

The boy cringed. "She said she would go to the top of the Wall to wait. I brought a horse -"

Jon shook his head impatiently. With a thought, he called, and felt the stirring in Visarion's wild mind. The dragon swooped down from the sky and Jon swung himself onto the creature's back. There was something still marvellous about riding a dragon, even after all these years. He knew he should spend more time with Visarion, although his control of the dragon was now unshakable. The spells that bound Targaryen to dragon were tenuous – no one knew for sure if they had duplicated what his ancestors had used, but there was no need to fear a loss of control with his ability to warg into the dragon's mind. He usually allowed Visarion to fly free for days on end.

The dragon landed on top of the wall and Jon clambered down onto the ice, thankful of the high walls that guarded his landing space and prevented a slip. Even in the weak summer sunshine, the Wall was weeping and slick.

He found Sansa sitting by the edge not far away. Even through his annoyance, found himself smiling at her concept of what to wear on top of the Wall. The wind from the north was like a steel blade, sending the full skirts of her riding dress wiping behind her in a flurry of sky-blue silk. The matching cloak was doing the same, held on her only by a round silver brooch at her throat. Even her hair was sliding out of its braid, the pins that had once secured it sparkling in the sunshine behind her. She was gazing over the edge of the Wall, looking out over the wild lands beyond.

At one-and-twenty, Sana was lovely; he had to admit it, but she was all artifice and impractical fragility. He thought of Ygritte's crooked smile and tumble of red curls, of Val striding out of the snow with Ghost at her side. _How could any man think Sansa Stark is truly beautiful, if he had glimpsed Daenerys the Mother of Dragons bloody and glorious on the battlefield?_

He moved to her side. A hundred feet below them, a hawk was soaring over the wreckage of the battlefield, now carpeted with flowers and masked by sapling trees. The afternoon sun shone on greenery and small summer streams flowed where five years ago the living dead had covered as far as the eye could see. The war is being forgotten, thought Jon. Perhaps it was time to send Visarion to burn the land clear again. But the green always came back to the soil so quickly. The hawk wavered in the air, then veered away north. Sansa sighed.

Jon put his hand on her shoulder when she sighed. "Were you trying …?"

She nodded, still watching the bird fly away. "I know you think I have the gift, but I have never felt it the way that the rest of you do." She shook her head, still watching the hawk fly away. "Maybe it would be different if I hadn't lost Lady so soon."

"Birds are difficult. You should practice on something easier." _A skinchanger who is afraid of their gift will never be able to use it,_ he thought. Jon felt her shivering. Silently, he shrugged off his thick dark cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"You will get cold," she protested.

"I don't even feel the wind anymore." Jon said. He waited, but she said nothing, and the silence stretched out between them. "Sansa, what are you doing here?" he asked finally. "You are supposed to be riding south."

She stood up abruptly. Her riding boots, absurdly impractical on the wet ice, slipped underneath her and Jon reached out to catch her elbow. She twisted her fingers through her hair, trying futilely to push it out of her face. She shook her head, seeming to be grasping for words. "You cannot ask this of me," she burst out.

Jon sighed. "Who else do I have to send who knows King's Landing the way you do? Aegon wants me to attend his court. I need to at least send a representative to speak in my name."

"You are the heir to the throne. Your brother is reasonable to want you to be at court until Queen Arianne gives him a son."

Jon sighed. "I understand that, which is why I need to send someone who knows how not to offend the southerners. You lived at court for two years, Sansa."

"I was a hostage! You don't understand what it was like …" she trailed off and turned away.

_We all suffered in the war_, he thought. _And I've never heard that the living dead made it to King's Landing_. But he didn't want to burden Sansa, pretty and delicate Sansa, who had probably never missed a meal or slept without a roof over her head, with the knowledge of some of the things he had seen.

"Is there anything or anyone at King's Landing that have given you have cause to fear?" Jon waited until she slowly shook her head. A different thought occurred to him. "Is this about your husband?" He tended to forget that Sansa was still in law the wife of Tyrion Lannister, a marriage that appeared to exist solely through the exchange of polite letters carried by a knight in Tyrion's service. (Jon suspected the man - Pedro? – of being more enamoured of his lord's wife than Tyrion himself was). As the Hand of the King, Tyrion would be in King's Landing.

"No, Tyrion and I are …" she trailed off, waved her hands helplessly. "The way we have always been."

"Just a few months, Sansa, smooth things over with Aegon and get him to understand I am needed here." In truth, Jon had given his half-brother on the throne little thought other than to be grateful that the man's existence meant he did not have to take the throne. He had met Aegon one, when the third Targaryen had brought the Golden Company to the Wall at the end of the battle for the dawn and taken ridership of Rheagal. His impression of his brother, his elder, had been one of youth and impatience, but reports from King's Landing were that he had grown into a pragmatic and just ruler. Things had been testy, however, since Aegon's son and heir had died of a fever, returning Jon to the unwelcome status of heir to the Iron Throne. Jon had refused all of his brother's requests to attend court, and their correspondence had been increasingly antagonistic. Sending Sansa to King's Landing in his place had seemed like an ideal solution.

"But you are not needed here, Jon. What are you doing that the Lord Commander cannot accomplish without you? You neglect your duties as Prince of the Realm and heir to the throne, you leave me to make most of your decisions as Regent of the North." She held up her hand as he opened his mouth. "And I _do_ make all the decisions, without much help from any of the rest of you. You fret about monsters that may not come for another eight thousand years. Six months ago Arya announced over breakfast that she has never seen a sea monster and I have not seen her since. Rickon is hunting aurochs with Lyanna Mormont as we speak, and Bran is a tree. Explain to me how a _tree_ is supposed to help me negotiate trade agreements!"

"Have you forgotten that the dead rose?" Jon snapped. He was getting more and more angry with Sansa, particularly her unkindness about Arya, who had adapted almost as poorly to the peace as Jon himself. On her visits to the Wall, he had been heartbroken by the lost, empty look in Arya's eyes, at her restlessness. Sometimes he wondered how it was that only Sansa, the seemingly weakest of all of the Stark children, had emerged from the war and the winter the one most unscathed. It was as if aspects of the past had simply vanished from her mind, or had been rewritten into something more pleasant. If so, he envied her.

"I know the dead rose, and I know that the Others were defeated. We are still here." She shook her head impatiently, and sparkling pins in her streaming hair caught the sunlight. She caught her lip between her teeth, and took a breath. "But … Daenerys is gone, Jon. If she had lived and you had died she would not be wasting her life in mourning you. You know that."

It felt like a blow to his gut. "You don't understand. You have never loved anyone the way that Daenerys and I loved each other."

Sansa stepped back and her face went still. "At least I understand the difference between fulfilling one's duty and hiding from it," she snapped back. "Father, _my_ father would never have behaved like this."

"Now you sound like your mother."

"What do you wish to say about my lady mother?" she asked, her face pale. She pulled Jon's cloak tight around herself.

"Oh do not be coy, Sansa. You know as well as I that Catelyn would have pushed me out the door to beg at the gates if she could."

"Can you blame her for the way she felt? Your presence at Winterfell shamed her. Every day, it shamed her that you were raised with the trueborn children." Sansa closed her eyes for a moment, and her voice shook. "She believed that Father loved another woman enough to disgrace his wife by taking a bastard into their home. She died believing that, and rose and died again, still believing it. He let her die believing that."

"Is that my fault? He did it to keep me safe."

"None of it was your fault, but … he lied to her for you." Her voice shook. "I thought Father would never tell a lie, and all their lives together he lied to my Mother for your sake."

"Like you have never told a lie, Sansa," he snapped, furious. "Arya told me all about how you lied for that little shit of a prince of yours after you left Winterfell. I don't remember? It all happened so fast? Does that sound familiar?"

Sansa shook her head, shrinking further into the cloak. "That is just like the two of you, laughing together behind my back."

"Arya treated me like her brother, not her bastard half-brother."

"I was a child!" She turned away, then turned back, her eyes hard and the pins in her hair flashing. "And the truth is that you were our bastard half-brother, and you are still a bastard. I don't care what the decree of legitimization says, Jon Snow, you are a bastard."

"And you are a spoilt brat who never cared about anyone but yourself." Jon took a deep breath and forced his anger down. "This ends now." He told her, keeping his voice from shaking. "Remember that I am the Regent of the North and a Prince of the Realm. You have chosen to live as a Stark and that makes you subject to my orders. You will go to King's Landing as you have been commanded. If not, you are welcome to return to the protection of your husband."

Sansa glared at him. "Valar dohaeris," she said bitterly. "I will go, and you can receive the trade delegations, and arrange the marriages, and try to control Rickon. And I hope it all goes to seven hells on you." She unfastened Jon's cloak and pushed it into his hands. "I will depart for King's Landing immediately. Goodbye, your highness." She tossed her hair over her shoulder and stormed off in the direction of the cage, her thin cloak fluttering in the wind behind her, her riding boots slipping on the ice.

He watched her walk away, and drew breath to call out to her. Then he let that breath out, the words unspoken, bitter anger still lingering like a taste in the back of his mouth.

_Bastard, _her voice echoed in his mind and it was like a stab, over and over again. _Not a true Stark, not a true Targaryen, my oaths to the Night's Watch gone with my first life, _he thought_. I have no true family. I thought I came back from the dead for Daenerys, but I made the mistake of living on after her, day after day after wretched day, with nothing but duty. I was nothing but a warrior, and now I have no battle to fight. _

He sat down on a pile of ice, suddenly exhausted. He felt the anger running out of him, the dark lassitude that was so familiar replacing it. He should never have let himself get so angry with Sansa. Too late to take any of it back. He looked north to where Visarion soared in the air over his brother's bones. His vision wavered and blurred. He touched his face and realized he was crying. _I cannot continue existing like this_, he thought. _Seven years._ _ I cannot go on, and I cannot go back, and I cannot continue like this. _The Wall was ice underneath him, and the wind was blowing straight through him like a knife, and he could not even move to shield himself from its cut.


	2. Chapter 2

_To Jon of the House Targaryen, Prince of the Realm (legitimized), Regent of Winterfell, Warden of the North, Guardian of the Wall and the Lands Beyond, and Dragonrider to Visarion the Fleet._

_I have arrived in Gulltown, after a week at sea. I was ill every day. Robert Arryn rode from the Eyrie to meet my ship as we docked. I had concerns that he would demand that I get back on the ship and sail south after a mere hour on shore, but my cousin Lord Arryn of the Vale is a gracious and noble Lord who would never dream of such behaviour. _

_By happy coincidence, Sir Podrick Payne also has happened to visit the Vale during my time here. (You may not remember Sir Payne, who is in service to the Lannisters. He hunts at Winterfell every year and has helped you to patrol north of the Wall three times.) I was surprised by his visit as there is no tourney scheduled in the Vale this season, but he was kind enough to take Sweetrobin climbing in the mountains in search of hatchling falcons and to hunt down a shadowcat which had been terrorizing the local smallfolk. Sir Payne has made a great reputation for valour since the war. Most of his deeds have been done south of the neck, and are therefore, of course, of no interest to you. _

_The Vale is at peace, but on my trip south we saw evidence of recent trouble. Last year pirates had established themselves on the Isle of the Paps and were raiding the shipping between White Harbour and the south. Three royal ships sent to deal with them were sunk and captives plucked from the water were mutilated in the most gruesome manners imaginable before being left alive on the beaches of the fingers. The pirates were unassailable until your brother came personally on Rheagal and burned them out of their stronghold. We stopped at the Isle to take on water. Water is the only thing of value left there. Even what had once been a sandy beach was fused into glass. Although you must know it well, I had never seen the effects of dragonfire before – I understand well now how the first Aegon and his sisters were able to conquer the Seven Kingdoms. _

_I have had clothing made appropriate for attendance at court, the accounts for which are enclosed. As I am travelling as your representative, the expenses should be charged to your own incomes as a Prince of the Realm and not to those you manage as Regent of the North. You will find the amounts are substantial._

_I sail for King's Landing in the morning. I anticipate being ill the entire way._

_By my hand, Sansa Stark, the Lady of Winterfell_

* * *

The ocean waters were calm for the first time in the voyage south as Sansa's ship, the Mermaid's Tale, pulled into Blackwater Bay. She sat at the bow, resting one hand on the battered figurehead of a mermaid lifting a conch shell to her smiling lips, and watched the blue waters slide by. The sun sparkled on a thousand tiny ripples in the surface of the water, and the sails snapped in the light wind. Gulls flitted through the rigging. When did I last spend a morning idle? Sansa wondered, and could not remember.

She pulled her grey cloak around herself against the breeze. In truth, she had needed the new clothes; it had been an increasing effort to keep her old dresses from looking shabby even by the relaxed standards of the North. The north was as poor in coin after the winter as it was starved for manpower, and making Winterfell and the winter town habitable for the next cold season swallowed both resources at a prodigious rate. One less needlewoman meant coin for one more skilled stonemason. Sansa had been grateful to Septa Mordane's teaching of sewing skills as she tried to keep Rickon looking like the Lord of Winterfell – although she had not envisaged him wearing an elaborately embroidered wolf-head vest shirtless and over fur pants, she had to admit the effect was striking.

Hopefully, the financial situation would improve with the years. Although she had reproached Jon for his lack of attention to his duties as Regent, she was glad that he had not looked too carefully at some of her schemes over the last seven years. The stop at the Vale had allowed her to advance her plans to marry Robert Arryn to Wylla Manderly of White Harbour. Wylla would do well in the Vale, and Sweetrobin needed a strong Lady, Sansa knew. In the longer turn the marriage would only serve to bind the Vale closer to the Starks.

Sansa had also been careful to keep on good terms with her Tully relations. Rickon and Arya would have thrown away the Tully alliance over Roslin, so it had been left to Sansa to paint a smile on her face during her visits and let the Frey kiss her cheek like a sister. (Roslin had been so grateful that Sansa had even felt a bit of remorse over some of the recent mysterious misfortunes to have befallen the Frey clan.) It had been worth it when Edmure had agreed to betroth his eldest daughter to a northern bannerman. Sansa had plans regarding control of the trade between the three kingdoms north of the Trident. The marriages and agreements she was brokering now should provide a very nasty shock to the southerners in a generation or so.

While she had been in the Vale, Lord Nestor had been celebrating the birth of his daughter Myranda's third son, another heir to Highgarden. Sansa, along with Margaery, had her fingers in the match between Myranda Royce and Willas Tyrell after the war, and it had been a great success. Jolly, shrewd Myranda had brought Margaery's crippled brother out of his shell and he had tempered some of Myranda's more wild inclinations. Sansa had attended their marriage at the Gates of the Moon. Gentle Willas had kissed Sansa's hand and thanked her, and that night she had gone to bed with a pot of tea and had a long self-indulgent cry for what might have been.

Still, she though, there were worse things than to be alone. Jon had promised Arya after the war that he would not force her into marriage, and Sansa's sister had taken full advantage of that rash oath. Even if Jon had been willing to make Sansa the same promise he had made Arya, she would not have trusted his word to the Stark sister he loved less. So when she and Tyrion had met at Riverrun early in the spring, and Tyrion had offered to annul their sham of a marriage, she had declined. If I were truly wed, she thought, what value would I have to my husband? Only the beauty which will fade soon enough and a chance of inheriting Winterfell that will vanish as soon as Rickon fathers an heir. Then, she thought, I would be at the mercy of a stranger.

Sansa knew on some level that she should resent Rickon's future bride. She would have to surrender the title of Lady of Winterfell and the freedoms and honours that went with it. However, she could not find it in her heart to hold a grudge against this unknown girl who would replace her. If only her coming meant babies at Winterfell, Sansa thought, and if she let me hold them sometimes, I could forgive her anything.

"Milady?" She looked back at Jorman the Bear, the captain of her guard. He stood the rocking deck of the ship like it was dry land. "They say we will be docking within the hour." He leaned in with a grin. "If you want to jump out and swim home, girl, now would be the time."

"Tempting," she answered with a smile. "If only I could swim." Jorman called himself a Bear, but Sansa knew he had never seen the Mormonts' island. His mother had been a salt wife taken by the Ironborn, and he had been born on Pyke. He had left as soon as he was of age, and although she knew he returned to visit his mother he never spoke of his father. Jorman had fought as a sellsword in Essos, then come to the North to fight under Stannis in the war. "Is everything ready?" she asked him.

He grinned. "We'll do our parts in your little show, don't you worry about that."

When Jorman retreated, Sansa took a deep breath and finally raised her eyes. The Red Keep shone in the morning sun. How could it look so beautiful, she wondered? The walls should crack with disease and ooze all the blood that has been shed there. The bells of the Great Sept should ring to the sound of screams. How could King's Landing pretend to be a place of peace? She dropped her eyes, unable to look any further as a surge of nausea overwhelmed her and she almost retched over the side.

_Jon asked me to do this_, she thought, _because he cannot_. _Jon's body is healthy, but there is something broken in his mind, and the Red Keep is not kind to broken things_. Sansa wished she could have found some way to shake Jon out of his melancholy, but Arya had always firmly dissuaded Sansa from her various plans to do so over the years. Given the disastrous results of her visit to the wall, she had to admit her sister had a point. _I can do nothing to free Jon from the darkness in his mind. But I can stand in his stead at his brother's court and perhaps help keep the peace of the realm. When he is ready, I can make sure there is something for Jon to come back to. This is the only thing he has ever asked of me. I can do this. S_he took a deep breath, touched the round silver pin at her throat, and raised her chin to face the scene of all her nightmares.


	3. Chapter 3

The docks of King's Landing were a riot of colours, sounds, and smells, most of them bad. Sansa wrinkled her nose and wished that the past kings of Westeros had spent less time warring and more time building good sewers. The reek of half a million people under the midsummer sun was near overpowering. She sat hunched in the rowboat that ferried her from her ship and pulled her headscarf across her nose.

She had timed her arrival around the court, not the tides, and the seamen had to lift her physically up onto the quay like a bag of potatoes. Waiting for her was a small, familiar figure with attendants and banners behind him. She knelt on the stone to kiss her husband's scarred cheek. He embraced her awkwardly.

"My wife, I swear you are more beautiful every time I see you."

"I would take that as a compliment, husband, if we had met more often," Sansa retorted. She smiled to pull the sting. Although she was careful not to let her face show it, she was shocked by how much Tyrion had aged since she had seen him four years ago. Deep lines were etched in his face – pain? Fatigue? Sadness? His hair and beard were entirely silver, giving him the look of a small old lion gnawing at a bone and surveying the domain he once had ruled.

Tyrion had a litter ready, and waited almost gallantly while she settled the pool of her skirts and cloak before climbing in himself. To her surprise, Tyrion did not suggest closing the curtains once they were underway. The last time they had shared a litter in the streets of King's Landing he had feared that the populace would throw dung at him – clearly he had risen in the esteem of the smallfolk.

"Prince Jon was unkind to send you here." Tyrion observed, breaking the silence that had stretched between them as soon as they were alone.

Sansa shared the sentiment, but had no intention of admitting so to anyone outside the family. "He did what he thought was best. The North does not have flocks of diplomats at its command."

"Yes, I know. Aegon asked Jon to come to court at my suggestion, but I didn't anticipate this. I'm sorry, Sansa." He shook his head. "Never mind. Just keep your head down and you'll be back safe in Winterfell before you know it."

"Safe? Is there trouble?"

"There is always trouble when one is governing Westeros. Nothing you need to worry your little head about."

Sansa mentally sighed. Her husband had been tempted to treat her like a grown woman at twelve: now that she was a woman grown in truth he seemed unable to think of her as anything but a rather dim-witted child. "Is a wife not supposed to share her husband's burdens?"

"Are you offering to start assuming wifely duties? That should make this visit much merrier," Tyrion japed. She dropped her eyes and stared at her skirts, her stomach doing a slow queasy roll. Tyrion sighed. "That was a joke, Sansa."

"I know," she said carefully, willing her voice not to tremble. Of course she knew that. If he had wanted to insist that she return to him and live as his wife, Tyrion could have done so at any time since the war. She willed her heart to stop racing.

"I guess you should know one thing. There will likely be a new Hand before the year is out. No, I'm not out of favour, or tired of the job. I am sick." He touched his side. "Last year the Grandmaester found a little lump. Now it is a big lump and two more small ones to keep it from getting lonely. Only the King and the Grandmaester know this, but I am unlikely to see the autumn."

She looked up, then, shocked out of her fear. "Then I am glad I came, if for nothing more than to be here."

Tyrion scoffed. "Please spare me your insipid sentiments. I miss Lannisters. Not those pathetic cousins who will inherit the Rock: real miserable, scheming, drinking, plotting Lannisters all fighting and fucking each other. I miss disappointing my awful family. I miss being insulted by someone who knows how it should be done."

"I am sorry, my lord," Sansa said coolly, reminding herself that she was a lady and it would be inappropriate to remedy her little husband's desire to be insulted. "Does Podrick know? He would wish to see you again before …"

"Oh, I have no doubt that we will be seeing him at court before too long." There was a funny smile on Tyrion's face as he said that. Sansa was unsure of its meaning. She had never heard Podrick mention attending court, but of course, she realized, he must visit Tyrion. She felt a warmth at the thought of seeing at least one friend in her time in King's Landing.

As they passed the gate to the Keep, she saw a stone tableau above the arch. A man's stone body stood above the arch. Around his feet were bodies: a knight, a maester, and a woman in septa's robes. The fallen bodies were clearly statues, the details carefully rendered. The man's body was different. The limbs and face were startlingly lifelike, almost perfect, while the torso and the rest of the head was shrunken and misshapen. She felt a chill go through her as she realized that this was no statue. "Is that -?"

"Jon Connington," Tyrion answered flatly, without looking up. "The Plaguebringer. If you haven't seen a stone corpse before you will find plenty here."

"In the North, we were spared the grey plague," she said. _But we lived amongst the stone dead in the North, too, _Sansa thought, as the memory of the darkest time of the winter came back to her. Most northerners had fled to White Harbour and the south, but she, Arya, and Rickon had remained at Winterfell with a few servants and over the months refugees had trickled in, drawn by the hope of the life-giving hot springs under the ruined castle. They had managed to rebuild a few stone walls and roofs to trap the precious heat, but in the worst of the snows the makeshift buildings had collapsed and in desperation they had fled into the crypts and the natural caves beyond them. The precious hot springs had kept them alive down there in the darkness. Arya had given the order to extinguish the lights to save their fuel: she had been at her best in those years, giving orders with cold ruthlessness. Sansa could still remember reading Rickon's expressions with her hands on his cheeks and finding her way through the caves through the feel of a knotted rope in her hand. "We were fortunate that the food convoys from the Vale travelled too slowly to carry the grey death," she told Tyrion, with a smile.

"The population of King's Landing is less than a third of what it was in Robert's day. Most of the towns of the south are the same." She could see the truth of his words for herself as she looked through the curtains of the litter – many of the houses they passed were clearly uninhabited and the streets which had once teemed with people were quiet. Still, she shivered at the thought of that silent corpse overlooking the city, and the bitterness implied by the decision to place him there.

"Even the Keep has more than enough space for those of us who remain there. I have arranged quarters for you in the new Tower of the Hand, if that is agreeable. All we have to do is present you at court. Simple enough. Have you met the King before?"

She shook her head. "What is he like?"

"He's a King. Difficult, demanding, sometimes mercurial. He has a hot temper and a sense of entitlement as broad as the Blackwater. But he's no Joffrey, no Robert Baratheon, no Aerys. He was raised to be a good king and he tries hard to live up to those expectations. Most of the time he succeeds: Aegon never misses a meeting of the small council, knows the laws and ordinances forward and backward before he signs them, makes hard decisions and accepts responsibility for the consequences. As a Hand I would much prefer a king who signs things without reading them first, but nothing is perfect." Tyrion sighed. "You should know that Aegon has no love for his half-brother. Jon's refusal to come to King's Landing wounded his pride. But he should receive you courteously enough. At least I hope so."

_How reassuring_. Sansa had some plans on how to manage that, but she did not feel the need to enlighten her husband. "I have not said how grateful I am that you have been willing to continue our marriage, in all the circumstances."

"It didn't require any great sacrifice on my part."

Of course, she knew that Tyrion had no particular love for her. If he had no wish to remarry, she did not intend to question his motives. She had assumed he found the relationship as convenient as she did, so long as the two of them could avoid each other's presence.

"I had no desire to marry again. I usually assume that all women are whores," Tyrion said casually. "Noble wives are just very, very expensive whores. Of course, you don't cost me anything, but you don't do anything, either, so I suppose that works out."

_I haven't even set foot in the Red Keep, _Sansa thought in silent outrage, _and my husband has called me a whore. _It had been many years since Sansa Stark had believed in knights and heroes from songs, but if valiant Ser Duncan the Tall or Ser Arthur Dayne the Sword of the Morning had appeared before her Sansa that moment in a cloud of silver mist and offered on bended knee to do her bidding, she would have had one request: for the beaten body of her bastard once-brother Jon Snow to be laid at her feet.

Knightly saviours failed to arrive. In the courtyard, she refused Tyrion's assistance in getting down as well as his offer to escort her into the throne room. "Go on ahead," she told Tyrion. When he was gone, she slipped off the long grey cloak and handed it to one of her maids. The scarf wrapped around her hair followed it. She gestured to Jorman and her escort to step into the throne room ahead of her, waited the count of ten, then stepped into the centre of the doorway, pausing at the head of the steps.

She had planned this carefully. For a consideration, Olyvar (who had assumed conduct of some of Petyr's more dubious businesses in King's Landing) had briefed her on the styles of Aegon and Arianne's court. As she looked out she saw a sea of color: the oranges and yellows of billowing fabrics, sand-washed silks in rich hues, the glittering gold and patterned headscarves of Dorne. Sansa stood in the doorway in a column of white Samite silk. On one side of her was Jorman the Bear in ragged leathers and fur trim, despite the heat, and on the other was Throne, one of her female guards, originally a wildling spearwife and looking every inch the part. The contrast to her own immaculate appearance was striking, she knew.

She waited while a hush fell over the throne room, keeping her expression calm. She had one simple goal. _Make people remember what you want them to, _the voice of Petyr Baelish echoed in her memory. _Let them see your beauty and your presence, give them a show, and that will be the story they tell until they forget there is any other. _She hoped it would work. Many of Petyr's schemes had depended on wild luck, and she liked to know the results of her moves before she made them. She needed the courtiers and their touchy King to remember her dramatic arrival, and to forget that Prince Jon had insulted his brother by refusing his summons.

Sansa started down the steps, letting her wildly mismatched escorts fall into place a few steps behind her. The crowd parted in front of her.

Aegon Targaryen looked down on her from the Iron Throne of his ancestors. He looked nothing like Jon, she noted, surprising herself by how disappointed she was at the thought. His Dornish mother had also left little enough of her looks in her son, and he bore scant resemblance to his beautiful Queen. He was all Targaryen, as they had been described in a thousand songs: the silver hair and deep violet eyes, features that were so handsome as to almost be called beautiful. He wore a tunic in red and black brocade set with rubies and polished onyx.

The Queen who sat in a backless chair at his side was in sharp contrast to her husband. Her hair was dark to his fairness, her dress of flowing golden silk bright where he was grim. Arianne's eyes sparkled with a lively intelligence and good humour. As she sat, she rested one hand on her gently curved stomach, where the much-anticipated heir was growing. The King and Queen sat close enough that they could converse under their breath as they watched their court from above. Tyrion stood on the steps below them. Next to him was the only other face she recognized from her time at court – Garlan Tyrell.

No, not the only familiar face. In a corner, half hidden in the shadows, Varys the Master of Whispers, was watching her.

"The court is honoured by the presence of the Lady of Winterfell," Aegon said perfunctorily when she was announced. "But as I recall, I summoned my brother, Lady Sansa, not you. Why has he not answered my call?"

Sansa supressed a mental curse. "Prince Jon is guarding the North in the service of your realm and the safety of your people. Is the rising of the dead such a thing as to be forgotten in the turn of a season, your grace?" she said, keeping her tone measured, but letting it ring through the chamber. _This is how my mother would have spoken to the lords of the North. She would never have shown she was afraid._ "I recall that when the war of the dawn began, kings and lords squabbled in the south and the Night's Watch was held in contempt. I was only a child, but was in the throne room when the Night's Watch begged for men, and left with only criminals from the dungeons. Those were the men your brother was left with to turn back the greatest threat this realm has ever faced, and he succeeded. You may believe the threat is passed and will never come again in our time, but Prince Jon is not so confident and he is guarding your realm with all his resolve, your grace." She let the words fall into the sudden silence, and kept her eyes on the king.

"Well spoken, Lady Stark. The Queen and I apologize if we have welcomed you discourteously." Aegon's eyes flickered around the room, then back to Sansa, and she realized she had under-estimated the young king. _He knows the game I am playing_, she thought. Still, she was taken aback when he rose from the Iron Throne and strode down until he was standing on the floor at a level with her. It was only when he was moving that she finally saw the resemblance to Jon. They were built the same, with a lean muscled elegance and an economy of movement she could only think of as graceful. He extended his hand to her. When she gave him hers, he brought it to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. Close up, his violet eyes were dark, shaded with astonishingly long lashes, and dancing with amusement. Sansa was shocked. _I staged this scene,_ she thought in silent outrage, _and he is stealing it!_ She glared at him, and he answered the look with a half-smile that in happier days she had seen on Jon's face.

"Our court is honoured by the presence of the sister of of the Wolf Lord, the niece of Edmure Tully of the Riverlands, and the cousin of the Young Falcon. Not to mention, of course, the lady wife of my beloved Hand. You have travelled for many weeks from the most distant part of my realm to be here, and we are honoured by the presence of such a great lady." Sansa suddenly realized that he had not released her hand. How had she not noticed that? Aegon continued, "There was a time you believed yourself to be the sister of my brother, although I am not quite sure what that makes us to each other," he added, to the laughter of the room.

"Lady Sansa, I see that your reputation is well earned for more than just your beauty." the Queen said. Sansa suddenly realized that Arianne was standing at her husband's side. When had the Queen moved, she wondered. _Never forget to watch every person in the room,_ Petyr's voice echoed in her mind. _Don't focus on the main players so much that you miss the other moves_. The Queen was smiling at Sansa, although she gave Aegon a sidelong glance and a raised eyebrow. He gave his Queen a small wink as he finally released Sansa's hand. "I do hope that we will be good friends," Arianne continued.

"I would like that, your grace," Sansa said. Through the theatre, she found she meant the sentiment. "I would like that very much." She found herself warming to Aegon's Queen at least as much as to the cool, handsome king.

Standing, Arianne's pregnancy was less noticeable, although her dress was clearly cut to show off her belly. It would be her fifth pregnancy, Sansa knew, and not a single living child. The first two had been healthy, but the girl had died of a pox before the fever had taken the Crown Prince. Arianne's other two children had died within hours of birth. Small wonder the Queen wished to remind her people that she was fulfilling her most important duty.

Aegon stepped back, and looked appraisingly at her. "I offered my brother a seat on my small council, to speak for the North," he said.

"The Prince knows that you did him great honour," she answered carefully.

"So in his stead, he sends you, Lady Stark." Aegon continued. "In Prince Jon's absence you will take his seat on the council."

Sansa stared at him, stunned. "Your grace is too kind," she said. Behind him, she could see that Tyrion's face had gone white, and he was looking daggers at Aegon's back. Arianne, by contrast, seemed less surprised.

Sansa's mind was whirling. With one move, she had been catapulted from unknown envoy to a possible power in the court. _But … Winterfell_, she thought. _What does this mean? When will I be able to return home?_ Still, she knew that this was an extraordinary gesture and she could not refuse. "Thank you," she said. "I understand that quarters have been prepared. If I might have your leave to retire, your grace?"

"Of course. Lord Lannister … your husband," Aegon amended, glancing down at Tyrion, "has arranged rooms for you in the new Tower of the Hand." He nodded, dismissing her.

As Sansa left the throne room, she wanted to turn and look, to see if the King was still watching her or if he had moved on to other business. But that would ruin her scene, and each part had to be perfect. So she glided from the throne room without a backward glance, letting their last vision of her be white silk like a drift of snow in all the brilliant colour and all the darkness of the dragon's court.

* * *

Her quarters were spacious and airy, high in the tower with a view over the walls of the Keep out to the sea. Tyrion occupied the entirety of the floor below, she had been told. She was grateful to him for the diplomatic placing of her rooms – close enough to be appropriate to their long standing marriage, and for their households to work together as required, but clearly without any suggestion of co-habitation. She went to the window to admire the view.

A throat cleared, meaningfully. She turned to see Jorman standing with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face.

"I thought that went well," she said defensively.

"You haven't the sense the Gods gave a gnat, girl," said Jorman. "If you wanted to make a big impression on the King, could've saved yourself some coin on that stupid dress and just done the man on the throne room floor. That would have made them all forget they were mad at Prince Jon."

Sansa felt her face burn with mortification. "I didn't …" she protested weakly.

"Might as well have done, the way you were looking at him. Not that I blame you," Jorman smirked. "I don't go that way, but I'd be tempted to make an exception for him."

Sansa spun away, determined not to show that she understood what had just been said to her. Why do I keep paying you?" she asked thin air.

"He liked you, too," Jorman said.

Sansa turned back. "That may be no bad thing. When he spoke about Jon …."

"Aye, I saw it."

"This is far more than just the insult of not attending a summons. Aegon hates Jon. He barely knows his brother, but he hates him." She shivered. "Things should never have been allowed to come to this."

"I'll stay on if you do, girl," Jorman said. "And I'll keep you from harm best I'm able. But are you sure this is smart? We could be back at the Eyrie in a week."

"I have to stay," she said. "To leave now would be to make everything far worse than if I had never come at all." _This trouble will pass, _she thought._ I just have to figure out how to fix what is broken. I can find a way. I always have before._ She sighed. _Jon, do you understand what a mess you have left me to deal with? _


	4. Chapter 4

_To Jon of the House Targaryen, Prince of the Realm, Regent of Winterfell, Warden of the North, Guardian of the Wall and the Lands Beyond, and Dragonrider to Viserion the Fleet._

_I have arrived safely at court, and the king has accepted me as your representative. Beyond any of my expectations he has seated me as an advisor on his small council in your stead. Unsurprisingly, there have been voices critical of this decision. Since the Conqueror only three women not Queen or Queen Regent have sat as advisors on the council, including the Queen's cousin Nymeria Sand under Tommen. I hope that I am able to prove myself worthy of the honour. The other councillors have treated me with courtesy, although the presence of the Queen at many of the meetings is a comfort._

_King Aegon seems to be a capable ruler from my limited knowledge of him, but his rule faces challenges: too few able bodies to work the land and rebuild the damage of the war, the ruinous debts left by the Baratheon usurpers, religious fighting between the followers of the Seven and of R'hllor. Fortunately, the dragon prevents military challenges to Targaryen rule as Westeros is in no position to face any more battles. _

_Aegon grew up without a brother. He speaks little of you, but I believe he was truly hurt and angered when you declined to come to his court. He has taken the throne and performed the inglorious task of rebuilding a devastated realm in the shadow of two legends – yourself and Daenerys. I have no doubt that he knows full well that every noble disgruntled by his decisions likes to sing of the Prince Who Was Promised. Aegon would be only human if he resented you and you have done nothing to lessen that resentment. I understand your reasons for sending me to court in your stead, but if you were to make even a brief visit to court it would do much to reassure the King of your loyalty and regard. If you are unable to do so, I will continue to attempt to maintain the peace to the best of my abilities._

_My appointment to the small council necessitates a longer stay than originally planned, and I have been forced to allow many of my people with family at Winterfell to return to the north. My husband and I operate a combined household in some respects, but I have been forced to replace all my maids and half my guard. Accounts are enclosed._

_I have received a letter from Jeyne Poole at Winterfell, who tells me that Lyanna Mormont has quarrelled with Rickon. The precise word she used was 'stabbed.' I note that in the years I was resident at home, Rickon was never punctured with a sharp object. Have you considered doing something about this? _

_By my hand, Sansa Stark, the Lady of Winterfell, advisor to the Council of King Aegon the Sixth of His Name_

* * *

Day was breaking across the Red Keep. Sansa snuggled down into the blankets, drowsily contemplating going back to sleep. The councillors kept the same hours as their king, and those hours were long. Aegon took Rheagal out flying at dawn every morning and was never in the air for less than three hours. Lunches were devoted to hosting envoys, and court was held in the afternoon. The real work of governing Westeros was conducted by candlelight while the rest of the court slumbered or conducted their amusements. If their king had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy, his councillors did not. Sansa closed her eyes against the light streaming into her window and yawned.

She sat up abruptly as the door of her chambers slammed open. "Cousin Sansa!" a voice squealed. There was a weight on the bed, and Sansa found arms being flung around her. "I'm so glad you are here, I came as soon as I heard!" Her visitor pulled back and Sansa found herself looking at a completely unfamiliar young girl. She was clearly highborn, judging from her dress, and beaming at Sansa. "I'm so glad to see you again," the girl said, enthusiastically. She hugged Sansa again, burying her face in Sansa's neck.

I am being attacked by a mad girl, thought Sansa, grateful that she wasn't in the habit of sleeping in the nude. "It is lovely to see you, too," she said to the child, keeping her tone gentle and soothing. "How did you get in here?"

Jorman had appeared in the open door. Over the girl's shoulder, Sansa spread her palms in silent gesture of _'who is this person?'_ Jorman shook his head, indicating he was as mystified as she was. Sansa glared at him. The only access to her quarters was via the same stair Tyrion's household used, so the girl had made it past not only Sansa's own guards but also the Lannister men.

"Yeeeaaah, I'm ten years old," the girl said. "What were they going to do to me?"

Jorman nodded silent agreement, not looking nearly as remorseful as he ought. In fact, her chief of guard seemed to find the situation funny. Sansa pointed at him, then at the stairs, and he quietly vanished.

Sansa gently detached the girl from herself and took a look at her. _Who in the Seven Hells are you? _She cast about for a delicate way to ask the girl had neither the look of a Tully nor of a northerner. She was short for a ten-year-old, and skinny, with a round snub-nosed face. Only bright eyes and her lively expression saved her face from plainness. Her gown was expensively decorated in beads and a few gems, but Sansa noted that it was ill-fitting. Sansa frowned. "Where did you ride from?" she asked, fishing for clues.

"Oh, from home. I came in last night while you were in the council meeting – cousin Tyrion lets me keep rooms in the keep. It has been so long."

_Cousin Tyrion … a Lannister cousin? _This girl could not look less like the beautiful girls of the current Lannister generation – Janei with her radiant golden beauty, or the ethereal, delicate Joy Hill. "How long has it been?"  
Sansa ventured.

"I was at your wedding, but of course I don't remember it."

The pieces suddenly fell into place. "Because you were just a baby," Sansa said. _Ermensande Hayford, last of her line, married to Tyrion's first cousin Tyrek Lannister before she was weaned. Likely widowed not long after, but no one can prove it. Seven Hells, she actually is my cousin by marriage. _Sansa sighed, slid over in her bed, and patted the mattress next to her. "Come and sit with me, and tell me how you have been. Do people call you Ermensande, or Sandy?"

"Really?" Ermensande beamed, and Sansa knew that the girl had not been as confident in her welcome has she had pretended. The Hayford lands were extensive, explaining the rich clothing, but without Ermensande having any immediate family, Sansa wondered who had been caring for her. For all the girl's energy, she had a sad, neglected look about her. Most likely her care had been from distant relatives and perhaps a Septa or two. The girl's over-enthusiastic welcome of Sansa said volumes about how warm that attention had been.

_Poor thing,_ Sansa thought. She brushed the sleep from her eyes, and listened to the girl's chatter. Poor, mad, little fool to trust to a stranger in the Red Keep. _Life is not a song, sweetling. Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow. _Petyr's words, echoed in Sansa's ears. _Maiden, gentlest of the Seven, let Ermansande not learn that lesson the way I did._

* * *

After breakfasting with Ermensande and returning the girl firmly to the care of her attendants, Sansa had taken to the gardens to clear her mind with a bit of sewing. Her maids brought a folding chair and spread a length of muslin on the ground to protect the material of her skirts, and another over her head to shield her skin from the sun.

Brella, who had been one of Sansa's maids when she was first married and who now managed Tyrion's household, had recommended the two maids as experienced lady's servants. They were that, Sansa had to admit, and with her new duties she had no time to train inexperienced women in their tasks, but she missed her old servants from Winterfell. Their absence not only left her lonely, but deprived her of an important conduit of information about happenings in the Keep. These two were doubtless reporting to someone, Sansa knew. Still, she had been grateful for Brella's help, and glad that she had returned to Tyrion's service. The woman had been reduced to washing in the brothel during most of the winter, tainted by having served a traitor, and had struggled long to regain her position in the court.

Her purpose in being here was not simply to take the air (and avoid Ermensande). Many of the ladies of the court had the habit of walking or sitting in the gardens in the morning, and Sansa found it illuminating to note who spoke together and who did not. She watched the doings while keeping her fingers busy with sewing. She was making over the white dress she had worn on arrival, having decided that it was no longer politic to stand out too much in the court. She had decided to embroider a pattern of pale vines twining up the skirt and bodice of the dress, with tiny, brilliantly coloured butterflies resting here and there on the leaves. If she were honest with herself, she knew she was trying to copy the brilliant colours of Arianne's silks and the flashes of silver and gold that made the Queen sparkle in the light as she moved.

Sansa and her maids rose to their feet as the Queen herself came walking through the gardens. Arianne smiled. "Lady Sansa, please don't let me disturb you. You do such beautiful sewing."

The Queen was charming enough, but she had barely glanced at the embroidery before delivering the compliment, and Sansa was quite sure that Arianne had rarely held a needle. (Even the seemingly simplest of the Queen's outfits would have taken weeks of work by expert seamstresses, and what she was wearing now, simple flowing robes in Targaryen red with black accents, was so perfect it nearly took Sansa's breath away.) Still, Sansa nodded gracious acceptance of the compliment, which was well-meant. Arianne could not be more different than Cersei, the only other Queen Sansa had known. She was regal, but had a disarming manner that put even the most shy of her ladies at ease. Sansa had even seen Arianne coax a few words from Lady Seaworth, the wife of the Master of Ships, who was low-born and seemed to regard the other ladies of the court with reserved bemusement.

Sansa squared her courage before rising to speak to the Queen. "Actually, your grace, I was wondering if I might speak to you before the council meeting. There was a matter I was hoping to get your advice on."

"I know I am very stupid with figures, but I just can't make the numbers here add up." Sansa pointed to the column.

Arianne followed her finger, gazed at the column, and raised an eyebrow. "That is because those numbers do not add up. The accounts on our loan re-payments to the Pentoshi money-lenders are wrong. In their favour."

_It took me hours of double checking to be sure, _Sansa thought._ And she saw it in seconds. _Arianne, she had quickly come to realize, missed very little.

Not that being out-thought was an unusual experience here at court. The last few weeks had been a humbling experience for Sansa. She was coming to realize administering the remote and devastated north, where most people were strongly loyal to her family, had brought her into contact with few skilled players in the game. Uneasily, she wondered if she had begun to overestimate her own abilities in recent years.

"Is this the only one?" Arianne asked. Sansa shook her head, and Arianne pursed her lips. "The Master of Coin is either less able than we had thought, or …" Her voice trailed off ominously. "I will speak to my husband. Thank you for bringing it to me." She looked speculatively at Sansa. "You have an unexpected gift for accounting."

Sansa laughed. "Far from it. My great advantage is that I have so little natural talent with figures that I know every possible way of catching mistakes. I think the only time my father was ever truly angry with me was when I gave him some shoddy accounts. He threw the entire thing on the fire and made me stay up all night re-writing them."

Arianne blinked in surprise. "I had never heard that Eddard Stark was such a stern parent to his daughters."

"Usually more so to his sons," Sansa said, smoothly, skipping over her mistake like a stone skipping over the water. Lightly, lightly, and the ripples would fade and it would be as if nothing had happened. "Surely Prince Doran trained you in many things, since you were to rule Dorne."

"Yes," Arianne said. "Some of them are even useful to the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Sometimes," she added, and there was a note of bitterness in the Dornish woman's voice. Then Arianne shook her head. "I am glad you brought this up, although you could have approached the King directly." She gave Sansa a teasing smile. "Aegon won't bite you."

"I didn't … I just … I …"

"I was joking, Lady Sansa." Arianne smiled. "When my cousin Tyene comes for the birth, we will have to have a contest between the two of you, to see which of you can seem the sweetest." Arianne stroked her stomach, and Sansa thought that day would not be far away. "I would like to introduce you to all my cousins, the Sand Snakes," the Queen added.

"I would like that. I met their father, many years ago, and Ellaria Sand. Oberyn was a very ... memorable ... person."

Arianne laughed out loud. "He was that. I am sorry he never had the chance to meet my husband. There is more than a little of our uncle in him. That's not always a good thing – there are times I swear Aegon gets up in the morning and decides he is going to do nothing but be a complete shit from dawn to dusk."

Sansa gasped, shocked at the Queen's language, then laughed with Arianne. Yes, she thought, the Queen is a very skilled player indeed. Sansa knew better than to trust, never that, never here, but she returned the Queen's smile and thought that yes, she would like to know Arianne better, very much.

At the council meeting, the Master of Coin was not present. Sansa sat in her usual seat beside Tyrion and said little as befit the youngest and newest member of the council. But she looked through the papers in front of her – the draft laws and the accounts, the plans for the new justice system, and she could see it all unfolding in front of her, the future of Westeros being built out of the ashes one decision at a time.

She looked down the table, and Aegon met her eyes briefly. He gave her a smile of approval. She smiled back, feeling a blush staining her cheeks. _Arianne is right_, she thought. _I shouldn't be afraid._ She thought of high-spirited, silly, little Ermensande Hayford, her Lannister child-bride cousin. _We are building the world that she will live in when she is a woman, _Sansa thought. _We aren't perfect, but we are not doing so badly_. _I am not doing so badly,_ she thought, and was surprised at how happy she felt.

A/N – Thanks so much to everyone who has taken the time to review, favourite, and follow the story! It means so much to me to know that people are enjoying reading this as much as I am enjoying writing it. Please keep commenting!


	5. Chapter 5

The night bells had rung long since, and the small council had broken only to have the candles replaced. Including Tyrion, they were eight on the council, although with the Queen so near to her time, the grandmaester's seat was, as usual, empty. The man seemed competent enough, but he was clearly feeling the pressure. This child must be born healthy, thought Sansa, and preferably a boy. No surprise if the man responsible for the former chose to spend the evening with his books. The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard also rarely chose to take his seat on the council, leaving the remaining six to deal with the business of the realm.

The business of the evening was the state of the royal fleet. Since Sansa's knowledge of sailing began and ended with the unfortunate consequences of throwing up into the wind, she contented herself with listening and observing the rest of the council.

Robter Storm, the new master of coin, had been Renly's accountant. Sansa sometimes wished she had not intervened in the matter of his predecessor. Although the man had been dishonest, he had at least been pleasant. The new appointment had been born on the wrong side of the blanket to a serving maid at Storm's End, and had received nothing but bare acknowledgement from the hedge knight who had fathered him. He was rough spoken and supremely competent. With hard-earned bastard pride, Robter made no secret of his disdain for the presence of what he called a 'spoilt noblewoman' on the council.

The new Hand was likely to be the master of laws, Garlan Tyrell, or the master of ships, Davos Seaworth. Stannis' former Hand was as plain spoken as the Master of Coin, but he showed her nothing but kindness. When she had been introduced to Lord Seaworth at her first council session, he had taken her hand in both of his. "I fought with the Prince at the Wall," he had said simply.

Sansa had heard variations on the same since, from lords and knights, freeriders and serving men. "I was there at the Wall; I fought the dead; I battled in the dark; my brother fell by the side of Prince Jon; I was with the Prince to the end." They were not many, since there had been so few there in the battle, but the encounters always left her unsettled. In the North Jon was spoken of with affection and respect, but not this awed veneration, and Sansa did not know how to reconcile it with her knowledge of the boy she had grown up with.

She had once asked Podrick what it had been like at the Wall, if it had been so different from all the other battles of the War of the Five Kings. He had gone silent. "If you have to ask the question," he had told her, "you won't understand the answer." They had come close to a quarrel over it. Sansa had insisted that she knew what a battle looked like, as she had been at Blackwater Bay, and Podrick had commented that watching Cersei Lannister drink was not entirely the same thing as fighting on burning boats. Sansa had been forced to acknowledge she didn't have a winning position in that argument.

A knock on the door broke Sansa out of her reminiscences. Tyrion spoke briefly with a page, and turned to Aegon with a knowing smile. "Sire," he said gravely. "I am told that your Queen sends her apologies. It seems she is occupied with an urgent matter of state." There was a pause, then a murmur of excitement around the table as the news sunk in.

"Ah," said Aegon. He looked flustered for the first time since Sansa had known him. "Well. That's wonderful, of course." He looked around, as if suddenly adrift. "I guess, as there is nothing we can do on that front, perhaps we should discuss the meeting with the Iron Bank's envoy next week?"

"Sire," said Tyrion firmly, "there is only one decision a king should make while we wait for glad tidings." The Hand grinned wickedly, and produced two wineskins from a cabinet. "Do you think we should drink Arbour Gold or Dornish Red?"

Sansa's head was spinning from the wine and the candles were dancing in front of her eyes. They had played "Real Arms or Fake," and "Name the Targaryen." She had done well at the first, but her knowledge of some of the obscure figures of history was poor, and she had lost several rounds in a row. She rarely drank more than one glass of wine with a meal and had never in her life consumed so much in a sitting. Hopefully she was concealing the effects, even if she felt more than a bit addled.

At least, she thought, she was doing better than poor lowborn Davos, who had failed every round of the first game and now looked like he was about to fall off his chair. Garlan was slurring his words, Robter was more abrasive than ever, and Aegon was half slumped with his eyes closed. Only Tyrion, among them all, was looking none the worse for wear. Sansa wondered how he managed it. Her husband must weigh less than she did and had drunk more, but the wine seemed to have less effect on him than water.

"What shall we play next," Tyrion said brightly. "I know: truth or falsehood. We'll ask each other questions. If the guess is wrong, the questioner drinks. If they are right, you drink. You must all know the game. Your grace, you start."

Aegon didn't open his eyes. "Lady Sansa. Where did you get your brooch from?"

She blinked, feeling a sudden cold sensation. "It is just a pin. There is no story there. Nothing to tell."

"I don't believe you. You wear that pin every day and you play with it every time something bothers you." He opened his eyes and looked at her with a smirk. "That's my question. I want to know where you got it."

She would have loved to wipe that sardonic look off his face. Aegon knew his question was improper, curse him, or he would have if he had not been drunk. But her making a scene would only make things worse. "I'll just answer it myself. I paid the iron price for it," she told him, straight-faced. "I slit a man's throat with my own hands and took it off his corpse." Deliberately, she kept her face expressionless and her tone matter of fact. Even Aegon did a double take. Sansa waited a beat or two, laughed, raised her cup to him, and drank. "Let me think of the next question," she said.

"We haven't finished mine yet," Aegon insisted. "Don't dodge the question. You inherited it from your mother?"

"Everything my mother owned was lost in the war, either burned at Winterfell or stolen at the Twins," Sansa said shortly. "Drink." Aegon raised his cup.

The Master of Coin smirked at her. "It was a gift from a lover." He suggested. "A man? Or maybe ... a woman? Nights are cold in the north, I hear." Sansa just glared, too furious for words, and Robter laughed and drank. "My apologies if I have offended our Lord Hand by questioning his wife's virtue." Tyrion shrugged, indicating the matter was of no interest to him.

"No guesses," passed Varys.

"I chose not to ask a lady such a personal question," said Garlan. "And I think this game has run its course."

"Thank you, my lord," said Sansa. "If you have all finished your fun at my expense–"

"Don't I get a try?" came the voice of Tyrion from the end of the table. "You see, I fucked a whore once," he started.

_Oh Seven protect me,_ thought Sansa, her tummy doing a slow queasy roll. _Nothing good can come of this. _

The Imp's voice droned on, slurred, implacable. "And she had a pin just like that one. The pattern is different, but the work is the same silversmith. Now, the important thing is that the place I fucked that whore," he paused and smirked, "fucked her six different ways, was in a brothel under the walls of Winterfell." He raised his cup to Sansa. "My sister once told me that a noble-born girl may wear jewels worth more than a fleet of ships but not own herself. You like the pin because somehow you found the coin and commissioned it, and that pin, and it alone, belongs to you, Lady Sansa."

As Tyrion smirked, pleased at his own cleverness, she felt like she was twelve years old again, standing naked in front of him with her bridal gown on the floor around her feet. She suppressed a rise of nausea in her throat, raised her glass to him, and swallowed. "If you shall excuse me, my lords, your grace" she said quietly, "I suspect that my absence will allow the Hand to exercise his creativity in getting you all drunk much more freely, and profanely. I will return to my quarters and await word on the Queen." With that, she gathered the remains of her dignity, and fled.

The hallway was quiet, and deserted except for the Kingsguard standing silent watch. Sansa thought that it must be getting close to dawn. She wobbled on her feet. Rather than risking the stairs to her quarters in the tower, she turned the other way, where there was a bend and then a hidden alcove where the council members sometimes had discrete conversations. It was deserted and silent. Sansa sat on a bench under the arched window, and leaned her head against the stone. A wisteria vine had grown up the wall; it was in flower and its perfume was thick in the air. She closed her eyes, fighting back tears.

"I'm sorry." She opened her eyes to see Aegon standing in front of her. He spread his hands in apology. "I didn't think. It was not my intention to expose you like that. Tyrion ..."

"None of the Lannisters ever knew when to stop talking," she said. "Their house might still be ruling Westeros if a single one of that benighted family had learned not to vocalize every thought that crossed their wretched minds."

"Harsh words from Sansa Stark Lannister," Aegon laughed.

"Don't."

"I'm sorry." Aegon laughed ruefully. "I keep saying that. I'm not at my best tonight. Too much to drink, too much to worry about. I should have known better than to get into a drinking contest run by one of the most depraved sots in my kingdom." He gestured to the bench beside her. "May I?"

She moved aside to make room, and he sat, leaning gracefully against the wall. It was a pose so like Jon that her breath caught for a moment. A rush of homesickness filled her, not for Winterfell as it was now, but for Winterfell as it had been in the golden years of her childhood, when she had been foolish enough to take her siblings for granted.

"It must be difficult for a man," she said, saying the first thing to come into her mind to distract herself. "Doing nothing."

"After four labours, I know enough about the process to know I'm not getting the worse end of this, but yes, I do worry." Aegon sighed. "I'm fond of Arianne, and she's a good Queen, although she's not the Queen I should have had at my side."

"I don't understand."

"Daenerys." Aegon looked out into the darkness of the sky. "Jon Connington and the others talked as if it was inevitable, the last two Targaryens refounding the dynasty together. There was a time I never even imagined that she might refuse me. I invaded Westeros with only the Golden Company for Daenerys Targaryen, I conquered Storm's End, I went to battle at the Wall. I saw her there, for the first time. They told me she was the most beautiful woman in the world, but even my imagination didn't do her justice." His face went hard. "But my brother took her from me. She never saw anything but him."

"He never meant to hurt you. Jon is one of the best people I know. He just doesn't think -."

"That somehow makes it worse. I wish I could make him care enough to want to hurt me. Gods, that makes me sound like some kind of monster." Sansa put her hand sympathetically on his shoulder. He did not look at her, but did not move away either. "There were a lot of things Jon Connington told me. I was supposed to be prepared to be the perfect ruler. Instead, I'm just a poor copy of the younger brother I never knew I had."

"I know. When I was a girl I thought – I learned to do everything the perfect lady should do. My sister was all skinned knees and clumsiness. I looked down on her. But in the end, she was the one they all loved best."

"I find it hard to believe that no one would love you, Sansa." Aegon reached up to his shoulder, where she was touching him, and put his hand over hers.

To her own surprise, Sansa did not instinctively pull away. "Oh, you should have met me when I was a child," she said ruefully. "I don't think I ever called Jon anything other than my 'bastard half-brother'. I used to hunt him down to call him that, just to be mean. I was horrible. I don't even know why."

"I love it. We should send him ravens addressed like that," Aegon laughed. "I'll give orders to the Maesters." He paused. "What's Jon actually like?" he asked, curiously. "I only met him briefly when I went to the Wall. From the songs I imagine him spending all his days standing on a pile of ice, with a drawn sword in his hand, his hair blowing in the wind."

"I think that is about right, except the sword is on fire," Sansa laughed. "And he is thinking about how frivolous and stupid we are down in the south." The mirth ran out of her as quickly as it came. "At least when I was at Winterfell he would answer some of my letters. We had an awful fight before I left and I haven't heard from him since. I should have gone back and apologized before I rode south, but I was too angry with him. I don't know when I will get another chance."

"Maybe he will come south."

"No. Jon will never leave the Wall." As she said it, she knew it was true. _Perhaps I will never see him again_, she thought. Ten years ago he had ridden north, and she had ridden south, and they had never even said goodbye. Now it had happened again. How had she come to leave him with every reason to be angry with her?

"May I ask you a personal question?" Aegon asked.

"Perhaps. That depends on the question."

"It is no secret that your marriage to Tyrion was never consummated. You could have had an annulment at any time. I've seen the way you watch Arianne talk about her baby, like your heart is going to break. Why did you never want to truly marry, or take a lover? Was there someone in the war?"

"Yes, there was. Just not in the way you mean it."

"Who was he?"

"Joffrey Baratheon." She felt his hand tighten on hers, and shook her head. "You don't need to say sorry yet again, it was nothing to do with you. It was all a very long time ago."

"I know, I just think … I think it sad."

"There was so much sadness in the war. My lot was better than that of so many others."

He touched her hair with his free hand. "You are so beautiful, and your eyes are so sad … I wish …" She didn't know which of them moved first, but suddenly his lips were on hers, impossibly gentle. She leaned into the kiss and found herself raising her hand to run fingers running through his silvery hair, soft under her touch.

She unbalanced backwards on the bench, and he caught her around the waist. They both laughed, and he leaned in to kiss her again.

That was when Sansa's brain started working again. She pushed him away sharply. "No. Stop."

He pulled back, but his hands didn't move. "This is nothing," he said. He pulled her towards him and she put her hands on his chest to steady herself. Aegon smiled at her, and she felt like she was falling into his deep purple eyes with their long lashes. "We aren't doing anything."

"I don't …"

Someone cleared their throat.

A maester was standing in the entrance to the alcove, with a woman beside him. She was pretty, with a sweet face, golden hair, blue eyes, and a widow's peak. Sansa had never met her but she had no difficulty putting a name to her. Tyene Sand – the Queen's cousin and one of the famous Sand Snakes.

And her eyes were red with weeping.

Aegon jumped to his feet. "Arianne? The child?"

The maester's face was pale. "The Queen will live, but the child … I am sorry, your grace. The girl was stillborn."

Aegon went still, completely silent. Finally, he closed his eyes, and nodded. "Is everything possible being done for my wife?"

"Yes, cousin," Tyene said.

"Then we need to inform the council," Aegon said, his voice grim. He gave Sansa a look of silent apology, colour rising in his cheeks. Then he swept out with Tyene by his side and the maester following them.

Left behind, mortified, and horrified, Sansa could only sit on the stone bench and stare after them. _Well, that looked bad_, she thought, distantly, still half-addled and with the taste of Aegon's lips in her mouth. _That looked bad, Sansa, because it was bad_, said a mental voice that sounded like Septa Mordane. She sunk her face into her hands. She had compromised herself and she had disgraced Jon, in the middle of the disaster of the loss of the Queen's child. Still, she knew her duty. She took a deep breath and steadied herself for the humiliating return to the council chambers, wishing she had some idea of what to do when she got there.


	6. Chapter 6

_To Jon of the House Targaryen, Prince of the Realm, Regent of Winterfell, Warden of the North, Guardian of the Wall and the Lands Beyond, and Dragonrider to Visarion the Fleet._

_If the terrible news has not reached the Wall, the Queen's daughter was stillborn. The Grandmaester and midwives did everything they could, but she never drew breath. There can be no true mourning in the eyes of the Gods as the child never lived, but the realm grieves with the King and Queen._

_You remain heir to the throne. How long for, I cannot say. Arianne nearly died in the birth. Maesters and healers tied to the Martells say she can have more children. Those who were born of other ambitious houses have been heard to say otherwise. The Queen has not even left her bed and already the whispers that Aegon should put her aside are starting. Margaery Tyrell is already making plans to bring her cousin Alys Hightower to court (against all my attempts to dissuade her), and she is not alone in her scheming. The Martells are furious, with reason. _

_Under other circumstances I would attempt to broker peace, but I managed to offend the Martells recently. The matter was entirely my own fault, but incapable of rectification in the current circumstances. I would ordinarily attempt to maintain a low profile, but Aegon wants me to remain prominent at court as a sign of your support for the throne. All I can do is hope this crisis passes soon._

_I know that we did not part on the best of terms, but I would value some word from you, Jon. _

_By my hand, Sansa Stark, the Lady of Winterfell, Advisor to the Council of King Aegon the Sixth of His Name_

* * *

_Lady Sansa_

_I deeply regret what occurred between us the other night. If you are willing to meet me in the gardens this afternoon, I would like to offer my apologies in person._

_Aegon_

* * *

_You bloody, blithering, idiot - Are you serious? Fuck off, and go fix things with your own wife._

_Tyrion_

* * *

Court was quiet today, the attendees taking their cue from the King's sombre mood. From her stool near the throne, Sansa watched the petitioners line up waiting their turn. Tyrion murmured in Aegon's ear from the seat usually occupied by Arianne. Her husband had fallen on the stairs yesterday and he was still looking unsteady on his feet. Nothing seemed to be going right in the Red Keep lately, she thought.

Sansa kept her expression neutral and took care to avoid looking directly at Aegon. She had dressed carefully in a modest grey gown, high necked and full skirted, unadorned except for heavy silver embroidery on the cuffs of the long dagged sleeves. Still, she felt she could hear the whispers, the things being said behind her back and in the corners where they thought she couldn't hear. Lady Bestan, who was all of eighty, had called Sansa a slut to her face, and Ermensande Hayford had pulled the woman's hair. Sansa knew she probably shouldn't have appreciated that as much as she had.

The worst were the women her own age, most of them married with children. Their husbands had mostly laughed it off (Robter actually seemed to loathe Sansa a bit less now), but the women understood the seriousness of her transgression far better. Sansa's duties with the council had left her with little time to socialize when she had first arrived, and she would not have considered the ladies of the Red Keep friends under any circumstances, but it had been pleasant to sometimes sew and pass the news with other women. But the women whose company Sansa would have been inclined to seek out, such as once friendly Lady Leonette Tyrell, had made their disapproval plain. Sansa supposed she couldn't blame them.

She felt a rush of homesickness, and she thought of her last night in Winterfell. There had been a summer snow falling, and she and Jeyne Poole had spent the evening in women's hot pools, drinking Dornish red wine and eating sap-sugar candy while the water steamed and the snow fell onto their hair.

There was new business, and Sansa forced herself to pay attention. A young lord of the Crownlands came forward in chains. He had been accused of debasing coinage with a lowborn conspirator who had already been hung for his crime. His young wife sobbed and clutched a baby to her breast. Aegon heard his confession of guilt and his request to be allowed to take the Black silently. His eyes flickered to Tyrion, who shrugged, then to Sansa. She nodded slightly.

"Master of Laws?" the King asked.

Garlan stepped forward. "Your Grace, the letter of the law for this offence requires that all lands and possessions of the guilty be attained to the Crown."

Sansa gathered her skirts and rose. "Your Grace, Ser Garlan states the truth of the law. However, in the absence of your Queen I would speak for this criminal's lady wife who should not suffer the consequences of her husband's decisions. I ask for mercy."

"Your request is granted," said Aegon. "The lady shall be granted a widow's portion of the lands, and the same again for the support of her child. The remainder and all titles are attained. Further business?"

Sansa had been petrified to attend her first council meeting after the disastrous night Arianne had lost her child, and after Tyrion had rebuffed Aegon's note on her behalf (she prayed that the refusal had been courteously worded). That side of things, at least, had resolved easily. Aegon had started the meeting by referring briskly to 'recent embarrassing events,' everyone had laughed, and they had gotten to business. Sansa had been so grateful to him she wanted to weep, and he had given her that look that always reminded her of Jon, not the way he was now, but the old laughing Jon from the long summer of her childhood, and she had felt that everything would be alright. She only wished the moment could have lasted.

Suddenly her attention was caught by Tyrion's voice. "My king," he said, stepping down before the throne. "May I present a visitor to your court? I have the honour to introduce a knight whose deeds are known throughout the realm, Sir Podrick Payne."

Sansa looked up in shock, then delight. Tyrion met her eyes with a smirk, and there was no doubt in her mind that he had arranged this.

"Be welcome at my court, Sir Podrick," Aegon said formally, inclining his head. "I have heard songs sung of your prowess at arms. If you would favour me with a round at the training yard this afternoon, I would be pleased to test your skill."

"Your grace does me honour," Podrick said, staring at the floor.

"Oh, I expect to lose," Aegon said with a smile. "Being knocked down by great knights is good for Kings. It reminds them of their limitations. Until then."

It was the last matter of the session. As court broke up, Sansa made her way across the room. Podrick went down on one knee as she approached, and she extended her hand for him to kiss. "Dear Pod," she said. "Oh, do stand up." She kissed his cheek as he obeyed her.

Jorman clapped Podrick on the shoulder. "Good to see you, man. Go beat up the pretty boy, then we'll get a cup of ale in a tavern."

Tyrion scowled. "Don't hurt him, unless you want a feral dragon flying around King's Landing. I'll join you for that cup of ale and pay for the night."

"But you shouldn't let him lose, either," counselled Sansa.

Podrick looked worried. "So I should …?"

"Don't worry, man," said Jorman. "I'll trip you and break your leg if you look like you are in trouble either way."

"My lady," Podrick said formally, stumbling a bit over the words. "If I might escort you back to your chambers?"

"Suits me," said Jorman jovially. "See you in the yard."

Sansa took Podrick's arm, and he slowed his pace to match hers, her movement encumbered by her court dress. "Is there somewhere we can talk without being overheard?" he said quietly in her ear.

"In the Red Keep? Nothing has changed here except the players." Sansa retorted, but she took him up to a walk in the open air, looking out to the ocean, where the breeze off the sea would carry their voices away from most listeners and where their movement would inconvenience lip-readers.

"What is the matter with Tyrion?" Podrick asked her urgently when she told him it was safe.

Sansa blinked, taken by surprise. "Nothing is wrong with Tyrion," she said, unconvincingly even to her own ears. In truth, her husband had seemed so energetic, and she had been so preoccupied with other matters, that it had been easy for her to push the question of Tyrion's declining health out of her mind.

Podrick gave her a steady, disbelieving, look.

"Very well, he has an illness, but he has been … fine."

"Fine? _Fine_? Sansa, he could barely walk."

"Keep your voice down!" She tightened her grip on Podrick's arm. "He drinks too much, he always has, you know that as well as I. And he never walked well at the best of times. The Maesters say he could have years." But she remembered what Tyrion's words had been. 'I won't see autumn,' he had said, not 'I will live until autumn'. She had assumed …

Podrick shook his head. "I saw him six months ago, and the change is shocking. Sansa, he doesn't look like a man who has years left."

She took a deep breath, and let it out. She saw Tyrion every day, if he was deteriorating so quickly she would have noticed. "Everyone dies," she said. But even as she said the words, they felt unreal. She felt like her little husband would live forever, the last and best of the Lannisters who had dominated her childhood. She forced herself to keep walking, to keep her eyes looking out to sea.

"What happens then?" Podrick asked.

"The realm will continue much as it has, I imagine."

"That was not what I meant. What happens to you?"

"I will stay with him until the end." she answered, deliberately misunderstanding his question. "Tyrion might actually find the need for a wife to manage his household in his last days." She took a breath. "You have become a great knight, Podrick. You will have no trouble finding service anywhere you wish … but … I would like you to know Lady Ermensande of House Hayford. She is the sole member of her family. She has no brothers or father to protect her, and she is coming of an age where a lady alone may find a need for a champion. You would do well in her service." The words hung between them and Sansa did not look at Podrick. "She will be able to afford to sponsor your horses and armour, to host minstrels who will sing of your deeds, just as I have done these last years."

"Sansa," Podrick said, his voice breaking.

"No sentiment," she told him. "Our relationship has been mutually beneficial for many years. I have been very grateful for the duels you have fought on my behalf when my reputation was at issue, and I think you have no reason to think I have not been generous in return. But we both know that my ability to continue to be generous will diminish when Rickon marries and when Tyrion dies. You are very dear to me, Pod, and I would see you settled before that day comes."

They were approaching the tower where she and Tyrion kept their rooms. She pressed his arm to let him know that they could no longer speak freely. Podrick nodded his understanding. He gave her his hand as she maneuvered the heavy skirts of her gown up the tower steps. "Now, if you are bored," she said lightly, "You could go on a quest to find my sister, who is sailing over the edge of the world somewhere. You could take a ship from the docks and see the southern constellations and the Great Pyramid of Meereen, go to the festival of lights in Volentis. I could give you a few jewels to pay your passage."

Podrick chuckled, but there was a sadness in his eyes. "I've spent most of my life on hopeless quests for Stark girls."

"Think about what I have said." Sansa kissed Podrick's cheek and watched him descend the stairs of the tower, walking away from her. She turned away before he was out of sight. Podrick was sensible, as a coin-poor knight had to be. He would know that he could not risk his chances of patronage on her uncertain future.

Brella was waiting for her. "My Lady," she said hesitantly, and Sansa knew immediately that this was not good news. "The Queen has sent for you."

_Seven hells._

* * *

Arianne was pale, even days after the birth, and she lay on a couch with a blanket despite the heat. The curtains were drawn and there were no candles – the only light was a single shaft through a high window. Sansa remained in the shadows by the door after it closed behind her. The Queen had her eyes closed, her head back against a pillow. "I was not sure that you would come," she said.

Sansa blinked, thrown off balance by this opening salvo. It had not occurred to her that she might have refused. She caught herself mentally, marshalled her defences, and glided forward. "Your grace," she said, sinking into a curtsy. There was a moment of silence. "I am so, so sorry."

"Do you think I care?" Arianne asked, her eyes snapping open. "The last time I gave birth my cousin Tyene took Aegon's mind off things by bedding him. Aegon has had other women. Many of them, over the years. None of them had quite your spectacular lack of discretion." Sansa sat frozen, equal parts mortification and shock, as Arianne's lips twitched. Suddenly the Queen burst out in a peal of laughter. "Do you know what they call you? The Ice-Maiden of Winterfell. You chose an extraordinary time to break the reticence of a lifetime."

"I was drunk," Sansa said shortly, not laughing with the Queen. Arianne sobered.

"Please, sit down. I did not intend to make you uncomfortable. I fail to understand why a man and a woman may kiss and only the woman is expected to bear the shame. Any more than a man and a woman can make a child together, but the woman is to blame if it does not live." Her face twisted, and Arianne slumped back onto her pillows. "I gave up being the heir to Dorne to be Aegon's Queen and now they talk of setting me aside like a brood mare who cannot perform. You have been pilloried throughout the city for a few minutes' thoughtlessness. Aren't you angry?"

Sansa sat down on the chair by Arianne's couch, arranging her skirts. She did not understand the Queen's mood. "I am ashamed. This is not Dorne, Your Grace," she said gently. Surely you have lived here long enough to understand that. I am not a young girl, and a lady must bear the consequences of her actions. I didn't make the rules of the game, I just play by them." She watched Arianne carefully. "I was surprised by your summons, as others will be. Some have said I should kneel to you in court and beg your forgiveness.

Arianne rolled her eyes. "Do not be absurd."

"If you asked, I would do it," Sansa said calmly. "I've been on my knees before the Iron Throne before." _And almost everyone who was there is dead_, she thought, _and I am still alive_. She put her hand on Arianne's. "I am sorry for the loss of your children."

Arianne nodded, her eyes shadowed. "He will try to put me aside," she said bitterly. "My family will back me as much as they can, but in the end, he is still a Martell by right of his mother. He could do far worse than discard me, and they would never abandon him. Even I would never abandon him." She shook her head, and smiled. "Was it worth it? He's a very good kisser, isn't he?"

Sansa jerked her hand away, and flushed deeply. "I … I … don't know."

Arianne stared.

"Tyrion kissed me at our wedding," Sansa said hastily. "But …" Petyr kissed Alayne, she thought. Sansa had thought that the Hound kissed her in the fires of Blackwater, but that had been a lie her mind had told itself, although it still felt so real she could almost feel his breath on her cheek. "But …" she stumbled and stopped.

"I was drunk," Sansa said again, wrapping her arms around herself. "Just drunk and foolish."

"You don't react to him like you do to other men," Arianne observed curiously. "You are afraid of men."

Sansa stood abruptly, stepped back. "We are not enemies, are we my Queen?" she asked.

"We are not enemies," Arianne said.

"Then don't do this. Don't ask me these questions. Some things are so badly broken that they can never be fixed." Arianne opened her mouth, and Sansa held out her hand to stop her. "No. There is nothing you can do to help me. I don't need anyone's help. Just leave me the peace I have found." She dropped into a curtsy. "My Queen," she said, and glided from the room, closing the door behind her.

* * *

A/N - Thanks so much to all the reviewers and to everyone who is following the story! The story is a bit more than half-way through Sansa's section, and then it will be returning to Jon's POV. Things will be getting a bit darker starting with the next chapter, so I'd like to remind everyone of the warnings.


	7. Chapter 7

"Sansa, you don't have to be here for this," Tyrion told her softly outside the door of the small council chamber.

"I must speak for Jon if necessary. This affects him too," she replied. She stood by Tyrion's side, drawing comfort from his presence, as the other councillors gathered, and they waited for their king.

Just as Aegon arrived with his Kingsguard escorts trailing behind him, there was a commotion. Tyene Sand appeared in soft white robes. She had a piece of parchment in her hand. "Queen Arianne is too ill to rise from her bed, but I have her authority to take her seat on the council. She wishes to be heard on this matter," Tyene announced sweetly, her eyes on Tyrion. She did not even look at Sansa. The Queen might not bear ill-will, but her cousin was another matter. Tyene had made her disdain plain, and Sansa felt a rush of shame every time she looked at the Sand Snake.

"I am sorry, my lady," Tyrion said. "But the Queen has no formal position on this council, and your presence is not required by the King."

Aegon's face was hard. "Cousin, please do not make this more difficult than it is already."

The doors of the council chamber closed in Tyene's face, and the council members took their seats. Sansa silently seated herself at Tyrion's left hand. He gave her leg a reassuring pat.

"We all know why we are here," Aegon said. "The Red Keep is buzzing with rumours. Let what is being said be heard by all the council."

"The council has nothing but respect for the Queen," Garlan said carefully. "This is distasteful to all of us. But it must be said that the Queen is past thirty and she has lost three children in a row. If she is unable to give the throne an heir, then you must petition the Faith to set her aside. If you are going to do that, for the stability of the realm, the best thing would be to do it immediately and marry again quickly."

"Don't beat around the bush, Tyrell," snapped Robter. "Your sister Margaery was Queen three times, and now you're parading that Hightower girl around."

"If it comes to that then, Alys is both beautiful and kin to two great houses, Tyrell and Hightower," Garlan retorted. "The match has much to recommend it. Your grace is already bound to Dorne by your mother's blood. Arianne brought you swords when you fought for your crown, and that should not be forgotten. However, now you need alliances to unite your realm."

Davos Seaworth sighed. "I don't like saying it, but after seven years of marriage things don't look good. What about Prince Jon? If he were to wed and father sons that could sit the throne, then you could afford to gamble on giving the Queen more time."

"I don't give a damn about who sits on the Iron Throne," Robter replied. "Right now we have two Targaryens and two dragons. I want to know who is going to sit on the dragons if anything happens to Jon or to your grace."

Tyrion stirred. "The answer is that I don't know. I translated the old spells, but we have no idea if we have duplicated what the old Valyrians used, or even how those spells truly worked. We do know that one dragon was only ever bound to one rider, a Targaryen rider. Does anyone want to experiment with the population of King's Landing at stake?"

There was a silence around the table as they contemplated that. Sansa thought of the bleak dead island she had seen on the voyage south, and then of the children running the streets of Kind's Landing. She imagined those children burning in the dragonfire.

Garlan's face was pale, and Sansa imagined he was thinking of his two small children. "I hope your grace is careful on the stairs."

"Thank you for your concern," said Aegon wryly. "I am truly touched by the affection." He settled back, a look of vague amusement on his face, but Sansa knew he was watching them all, weighing everything said carefully, thinking, considering the alternatives.

"What about Jon," Davos asked. "If he won't come here, could a suitable lady be persuaded to journey to the Wall?"

Sansa wondered if they should just suggest shipping Alys Hightower (a refined, bookish girl) north like a sack of potatoes, greasing her up with pig-fat, and tossing her into Jon's quarters. Then she envisioned Jon's face at the scenario and had a wild desire to break out into a peal of hysterical laughter.

She repressed the urge, realizing that they were all looking to her. "Jon's grief for Daenerys ran so deep it was almost a madness." Sansa said. "To attempt to bring pressure on him to marry a stranger would be futile. There is nothing that you can threaten him with. You could attempt persuasion, if you could bring him to listen, but you have nothing he wants."

"Then the council must look for solutions elsewhere," Tyrion said briskly. "But I think we need not haggle over candidates for the next Queen at present."

Ser Gerald Corbray, the mostly silent Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, cleared his throat, "With all respect, Lord Lannister, we are here to air what is being said behind closed doors, to prevent conflict festering. We've heard of Alys Hightower, and others speak of your own cousin Janei Lannister, but both ladies can only bring ties to a single kingdom. There should be another name on the table. Arya Stark. The girl is untied and of marriageable age, and close kin to three of the Lords Paramount."

"_Arya Stark_," the Grandmaster's voice was thick with horror. "I met her once at Riverrun. She asked me to pass the salt at dinner and I nearly pissed myself right at the table." He flushed. "My apologies, Lady Sansa. I mean no disrespect to your sister."

"I know my sister," Sansa said. "Your grace, if you have the means to locate Arya, and if you could convince her to wed, you would have the family's gratitude. But she would never be able to find happiness in this place."

Robert Storm snorted. "Who cares about the girl's happiness? All she needs to do is get bedded and breed healthy sons. For that matter, who cares about the woman's agreement to the match? That would be Prince Jon's decision as Regent of the North."

Aegon shook his head. "Lord Storm, you are speaking of a highborn woman and Lady Sansa's sister. I will not hear such further disrespect, am I clear?" He looked around the table, meeting the eyes of each of his councillors. "But the Lord Commander is right. We should discuss all the possibilities. Lady Sansa, for a renowed matchmaker, you have been very silent." He paused. "Surely there are other names to be considered."

The question hung between them in the air. Aegon knows, Sansa thought. He knows that Arya would make a terrible Queen, he knows that Tyrion is dying, he knows that I will be widowed and will be marriageable again. I know what he is thinking – what he is asking – because it is what I would be thinking in his place.

She could see it, the future that she had once thought to have, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. The first time it had laid before her she had been a thoughtless child with no conception of what it might have meant. Now she was a woman grown, and she could see that path clearly. She felt the breath constrict in her lungs in sudden panic, and she pressed her hands flat on the table to hide their trembling.

"No," Sansa said to him, softly, both a plea and a warning. "No."

"I see," Aegon said softly. His gaze held hers for a moment, his violet eyes shadowed, and then he looked away, but she was no fool to think that this was over. "Then this meeting is –"

"Actually, there is a name that should be under consideration," Sansa said quietly, the words spilling from her lips almost without conscious thought. "Arianne Martell, the Queen of Westeros." Her words fell into a sudden silence, as the other council members looked at her in dismay, and Tyrion grasped her knee in silent warning.

"Nobody enjoys this, Lady Sansa," the king said, a flash of true anger in his eyes. "You do not need to lecture us like we are children."

She found herself unable to stop, driven by ten years of pent-up fear and misery, of disillusionment and anger. "You told us to speak freely," she said quietly. "Arianne is your Queen," she continued. "Whom your grace took to wife in the Great Sept of Baelor and who has given you five children. Now you want to send her back like a lame tourney-horse that isn't worth the money you paid for her." Tyrion was trying to catch her eye, and he shook his head, but she ignored him. "Another match would be an affront to the Gods and an insult to every woman in Westeros."

"That is enough," Aegon snapped. "Lady Sansa, you are here on my sufferance and in the place of the Prince, who cannot be bothered to attend to the affairs of the realm he is heir to. If you cannot control yourself, then you have my leave to depart from this meeting."

"Your grace," Sansa said quietly. She pushed her chair back. The room was quiet as a pin as she walked out, her steps echoing on the stone floor.

* * *

After her outburst in the small council room, Sansa had not dared to shirk court. She had, however, chosen to take a low profile and seat herself in the balcony where the ladies were inclined to watch court rather than in her usual place near the throne. Thus far, nobody had protested either her presence or her placement. Presumably word had spread that she was out of favour, although hopefully not the reasons for it. She had been grateful when Podrick and Ermensande had come to sit with her, giving Sansa at least two friendly faces nearby, as well as Jorman the Bear at her back.

Arianne was back in court, in her accustomed place by the side of the throne, but she and Aegon did not speak and only looked at each other rarely. The Queen had clearly dressed carefully for this occasion, in flowing golden robes embroidered with the sun and spear of Dorne and a crown of gold and rubies. Nobody could look at her, thought Sansa, and not remember that she could have been the ruling princess of Dorne. She was as beautiful as ever, with her thick dark hair and color in her cheeks. Whether the color was real, or a matter of artifice, was impossible to say. The message was clear – Arianne was still young, still ready to be the mother of heirs. She would fight for her crown.

Looking around the court, Sansa was dismayed to see that the number of Dornishmen at court seemed to have doubled overnight. The throne room was packed, with many unfamiliar faces also wearing the colours of the Reach, and even a few new Lannister lords. The jackels are gathering, she thought. Worse, the lords of different regions were glaring distrustfully at each other.

Suddenly, Ermensande touched Sansa's arm. "The man in Tyrell colors, standing beside the skull of Vhagar. Who is he?"

From the excellent vantage point of the gallery, Sansa identified the courtier easily enough, and stared a little. She could see why the man had attracted Ermensande's attention. He is handsome, Sansa thought, like a knight out of a song. She disliked the man instantly. His clothes were well made, but plain. Too plain for an appearance at court, she thought. Most of the Reach lords were overly ornate in their choice of clothing. He did not speak to any of the lords around him. "I don't know him," she said.

Podrick frowned. "He's watching the Queen."

"This is court, Pod. Everyone watches the King and the Queen." Sansa looked at the man again, and saw that Podrick was right. He was staring at Arianne. "Most likely he is a petitioner, but we can find out after the session."

"He doesn't look like a man of the Reach," Podrick said. "He looks Dornish." He held up his hand as Sansa started to object. "I know there is plenty of Dornish blood in the Reach, but that's in the south. His sigil is from Old Oak, near the border with the Westerlands. Not much Dornish blood up there. I am going to go and get close to him."

Without waiting for a reply, he hurried down the stairs to the floor of the throne room. Sansa mentally cursed. If she had been in her usual space it would have been no trouble to silently catch the eye of one of the Kingsguard, but up here she had no way to call for help without making a scene. That was the last thing she needed. Hopefully, she thought, Podrick will find that the man is a Tyrell bannerman with a Dornish mother and a slim pocketbook.

She watched Podrick cross the floor, approaching the Tyrell man. He caught his arm and said something in his ear.

It all happened in an instant, and it was done before Sansa could process what was going on. There was a flash of steel in the man's hand and suddenly Podrick was on the ground, and there were shouts and the clash of steel, and Podrick was on the ground and he wasn't moving, and people running, and Podrick wasn't moving and _there was a rapidly spreading stain of red on his shirt_.

"Sansa, no!" she heard Ermensande voice through the clamour, and Jorman swore. There was fighting on the floor, but she couldn't tell who it was. She could only see Podrick. She felt a hand try to grab her sleeve, but she wrenched it free and started to run. There was a press of people streaming up the stairs to the balcony, stampeding to get off the floor, and she knew she could never push her way down. Instead she swung her legs over the stone edge and jumped.

She hit the floor with a jolt that drove the breath from her body. She found herself on her hands and knees. The Kingsguard had their swords drawn about the King and Queen, but here there was just pushing and yelling and the flash of swords and knives. Podrick was on the other side of the room, and he still wasn't moving, and now the blood was a pool around him.

Sansa scrambled to her feet, gathered her skirts up, and dashed towards him. She ducked at the sound of a clash of steel somewhere close to her, but then she was sliding onto her knees next to Podrick. His face was ashen, but he was breathing, small shuddery breaths, and she almost wept with relief that he was alive. "Hold on, Pod, just hold on." The blood was on his chest and arm. She grabbed the hem of her dress and shoved the fabric against the wounds, pressing her hands into the wounds and holding. The cloth soaked red almost immediately.

"Fool girl!" Jorman swore above her, and she stared up at him as he smashed his shield into an oncoming sword, then into the wielder's head. A scream burst from her lips, and she buried her face in Pod's shoulder in terror as a body hit the ground not two feet away from her. "Just keep breathing, Pod," she wept, and all she knew was that she had to keep the pressure on, so she did.

And then something touched her shoulder, and she shrieked and cowered against Podrick's chest in terror. "Sansa, it's all right. It's all over." She blinked, and focused on Jorman's face. The throne room had gone quiet, she suddenly realized. Bless the Seven, there was a maester hurrying towards them.

"Keep the pressure there, if you would, my lady," the man said a calm voice, kneeling beside them. She did as she was told until the man dressed the wound and pushed her bloodstained hands away, telling her it was time to give them room.

Jorman helped her to her feet. The throne room was almost deserted, and a member of the Kingsguard stood at the door to bar entry. The maester was still working on Podrick, but his movements were less urgent and Pod was still breathing. He was still breathing.

By the throne, Arianne was shaking and Tyene had her arm around her cousin's shoulders. Aegon was still seated on the throne. He looked as if he had barely shifted position in the chaos of the fight, and his face was calm and remote. For a moment, his gaze met Sansa's, and there was a flash of anger, before he turned away to speak to Arianne and Tyene.

Ermensande was standing nearby, her face ashen and her small body trembling like a leaf. "Everything is all right now," Sansa said softly to her. The girl's face crumpled. She stepped towards Sansa, holding out her arms for an embrace. Whether it was to seek comfort or offer it, Sansa could not tell. Sansa stepped back. "No. I'm all covered in blood." Distantly she wondered if her maids would be able to get the blood out of the fabric, or if she would need to order a replacement dress. Jon would be cross at the expense, she thought with a detached part of her mind. Ermensande just shook her head, put her arms around Sansa and held on so tight Sansa almost couldn't breathe.

"What were you thinking, you stupid girl?" Jorman demanded.

"I don't know," she admitted.

"Leave her alone," Ermensande said, still holding Sansa. She reached up and patted Sansa's shoulder.

Sansa felt herself begin to shake. Blood, it is blood on my hands. Podrick's blood. Her skirts were wet with it, the fabric clinging to her skin. For the first time she realized that there were still bodies on the floor, other smears of blood. She stared at her hands, with thick clotted gore under the nails. Her fingers were trembling, she realized. Her vision narrowed, and went dark, and she didn't even feel herself hit the floor.


	8. Chapter 8

_To Jon of the House Targaryen, Prince of the Realm, Regent of Winterfell, Warden of the North, Guardian of the Wall and the Lands Beyond, and Dragonrider to Visarion the Fleet._

_Do those titles mean anything to you, Jon? Why have you not responded to my letters?_

_I write from the bedside of Podrick, who was nearly killed in fighting in the throne room, in the very presence of the King and Queen. He will live, the maesters say, although they cannot tell me if he will make a full recovery. We do not know what caused the fight, or how weapons were smuggled into the presence of the royal couple. Varys tells us that the man who nearly killed Podrick was a Ser Gerold Dayne, called the Darkstar. He has a grudge against Arianne and the Martells dating back to the war. Perhaps his actions were no more than that old enmity, and an effort to put the blame on the Tyrells, but I cannot believe it. I feel that this conflict is only the beginning of something bigger. The houses are withdrawing from each other, and courtiers who were once friends are looking at each other with distrust. I have not seen battle as you have, but I have known conflict. The court feels like the feast at Joffrey's wedding, like the Eyrie before Lysa Arryn fell from the moon door._

_It feels like the Red Keep before Father lost his head._

_I am afraid, but of what I do not know. Fear of the dragon prevents outright rebellion. Yet our history has taught us that war has come to Westeros even after the arrival of the dragons. I understand now why you fear that the Others will come again: it feels as if wars never truly end, as if the War of the Five Kings began in Robert's Rebellion, which began in the Defiance at Duskendale, back to the Blackfire Rebellion and the Dance of the Dragons and even back to whatever ill fate caused the Doom of Valyria._

_Reading what I have written, I must sound mad to you. I am like a frightened child jumping at shadows, when there is nothing in the darkness but I do not dare light a flame._

_The court is travelling to Harrenhal for a moon, ostensibly for a harvest celebration and a tourney, although I suspect Aegon wishes to send a message to the court about what dragonfire can do. There is no greater reminder in the realm than the melted towers of Harrenhal. Hopefully reconvening the court in a new location will change the dark mood that has fallen on all of us. You can reach me by raven there. Please._

_By my hand, Sansa Stark, the Lady of Winterfell, Advisor to the Council of King Aegon the Sixth of His Name_

* * *

Most of the keep was silent and dark. Sassa had placed the letter, sealed with her own mark of the direwolf ringed by snowflakes and lilies, into the hands of the maester herself, not daring to trust it to a servant. Then she had waited to see it secured to the bird and watched the bird fly north. Despite the warmth of the summer night, she shivered as she made her way back to the Tower of the Hand, a Lannister guardsman at her side. When had a Lannister man come to mean safety, she wondered, and everyone else danger.

Aegon had been in one of his moods ever since the fight in the throne room. He had been impatient in public and openly temperamental in the council room. Although Sansa knew he was almost frighteningly organized when he chose to be, he had seemed to take a mercurial pleasure in throwing the court into chaos in the preparations for the move to Harrenhal. She was only grateful that he seemed to be making an effort to spare Tyrion the worst of his ill-humour.

As she passed the door to the throneroom, she saw a flicker of light through the crack, as if from a single candle in the darkness. She gestured to the guard to wait outside, and stepped into the room. The dragon skulls were mere shadows in the gloom, the hint of long teeth and staring empty eyes following her as she walked across the stone floor to where a dark figure was standing alone. "Lord Varys," she greeted him.

"Lady Stark," he replied. "Did your bird get away safely?"

"Do you not know the answer to that question? I thought the Spider knew every thought in the mind of every person in King's Landing."

"You of all people know the limitations of information gathering. A reputation for knowledge is sometimes more powerful than the thing itself." Varys said. "I was never the man that rumour made me, and I am no longer what I was ten years ago. Age catches up with all of us." He paused, and his face, illuminated from below by the light, was sad. "Of course, some of us, like our mutual friend, never receive the opportunity to grow old."

Sansa looked away from him, surveying the dark throne room. Even in the vast space, the skulls took up much of the floor, turning what had once been open and airy into a network of shadowed corners and hidden spaces. "Do you come here often, alone in the night?" she asked. "To think about your past and all your misdeeds?"

"Misdeeds? I have, in the end, been victorious," Varys said calmly. "I defeated or outlived my enemies, and I placed my chosen king on the throne."

"And is Aegon all that you dreamed he would be?" she asked, giving Varys a sidelong glance.

"We all know he is not. We tried to raise the perfect ruler, and we forgot that he was a man as well. But he is a good king and the best hope for the realm."

"If you cared about the realm, you would have left Robert Baratheon or Tommen on the throne. Nothing they could have done would have been worse than the war." She stepped away from him, towards the skull of Balerion the Dread, and slipped into its jaws. Clad in dark grey, she knew his light-blinded eyes would no longer be able to follow her as she entered the shadows. "Westeros burned and bled, froze and starved because you and Petyr played the game of thrones. He lit the match and you fanned the flames." She ran her hand over one of the fangs, her touch sliding smoothly on the black bone. As tall as she was, it still came higher than her shoulder. "I used to think the two of you were so clever with all your schemes. But creating chaos? That is child's play. I could set this realm to war in a week if I wanted to. Building things that can last is far more difficult."

"Our motivations and methods may differ, but our goals have never been incompatible, Lady Sansa."

"I defend myself and the people I love," she answered sharply, moving into another dragon skull, making her way toward the skull of Vhagar, the place where Podrick had fallen. "I make no moves unless I am sure of their consequences. I limit myself to the North. I don't harm people. How easy it would be if one did not love, did not fear."

"You think I do not love Aegon? I am his, as much as you are Jon's. And I think you are no more blind to Jon's faults than I am to Aegon's. Jon is not what he once was, we both know that. He has isolated himself from friends and allies. He knows nothing of the realm except the North, and he cares less. He is a dragonrider more in name than in reality."

The dragons and the dragonlords, she thought. And all the rest of us just pieces to be moved about and discarded from the game as they wish. What were these creatures that Varys had set loose on the world, she wondered. What had he imagined that he was doing so long ago when he had arranged for the dragon eggs to be given to Daenerys Targaryen on her wedding day?

Sansa felt cold and tired at the thought of Daenerys, the fiery mother of dragons whom she had never met, but who had taken so much of Jon into the grave with her. Daenerys had come to Westeros so briefly, had saved and destroyed so much in her brief time.

"What is the point of comparing Aegon and Jon?" She asked. "Aegon is too stubborn to swallow his pride and go to Jon at the Wall, and Jon is … well, too stubborn to come to Aegon. There is nothing to bring them together." They were alike in more than mannerisms, she thought. Both of them clever, controlled, ruthless. Even the streak of bitterness in Aegon had its echo in Jon's touchiness about his bastard status. She thought about how she had taunted Jon with that at the Wall, and felt a rush of shame.

"Perhaps," said Varys. "Perhaps not. The last of the Targaryens, the sons of Rheagar whose folly brought down a dynasty – they will meet sooner or later. Do you think they will meet as friends and brothers, or as enemies? If they quarrel, what happens to the rest of us?" Varys shrugged. "Or would they unite, to ensure another dozen generations of dragonlords on the Iron Throne?"

"Jon has no interest in playing the Game of Thrones."

"None of us are given a choice about whether we play the Game of Thrones. Only about whether we win or lose."

"All your plans and schemes are just gossamer, Spider. One gust of wind would shred them," she said. She reached the skull of Vhagar, stepped out into the light on the spot where Podrick fell. "Was Darkstar trying to kill the Queen? Truly?"

"Why do you ask me?" Varys smiled. "No matter what the answer, you would not believe it. But for what it is worth, I don't know. My little birds have found no trace of him, and I know your efforts have met with no more success than mine."

"He was wearing Tyrell colours. If he had not been identified, the blame might have fallen on the Tyrells. Perhaps Garlan would no longer be Hand of the King, his cousin Alys banished from court. Or maybe the accusation might be that it was a set up. Davos Seaworth angling for the position of Hand, or the Lannisters attempting to make Janei Queen. Or the sister of Arya Stark, recently out of favour in the court, might take the blame."

Varys shrugged. "All possible. Or maybe it was just one clever Dornishman with a grudge and a talent for creating chaos. Does it matter when and a good man lies close to death." He hesitated. "I do offer my condolences, Lady Stark."

"To whom?" Sansa asked. "Podrick has no family, no holdings. He sleeps in ditches as often in palaces. If he dies, few will mourn his passing."

"I offer them to you."

Sansa turned away sharply. "Not to me," she said. "I have no claim on Podrick."

"Just because I am less than a man, you think I do not understand? We both know that there is no possible future in which the Lady of Winterfell could marry the son of an itinerant squire." His face was compassionate. "I imagine your brother's bannermen would burn Winterfell back to the ground if you tried. But after what happened in this room, no one could doubt your feelings. Just as everyone can see the King's … regard for you. Tell me, Lady Sansa, what will you do, if peace between the two brothers rests on you?"

Sansa walked back towards him as he sat on the steps with his little candle. She stopped in front of him, smiled without speaking. Then she leaned over and, with a gentle breath, blew out his candle. "Good night, Lord Varys," she said over her shoulder, making her way back to the door, moving easily through the darkness. "If I do not see you before the court leaves for Harrenhal, farewell."

"Goodbye, Lady Stark."

* * *

Podrick's sickroom was close to Tyrion's quarters. She slipped in quietly, and dismissed the Septa who had been watching over him as soon as the woman told her that there was no sign of fever returning. When she was alone, Sansa collapsed down into her chair and buried her face in her hands. She could cry, she thought, for herself, for Arianne, for Podrick, for all the smallfolk who would suffer if things fell apart, even for Aegon and Jon, but what would be the use of tears?

When Tyrion dies, she thought bitterly, I become the property of the North, for the Regent to dispose of as he wishes. If you had to choose, Jon, whose brother would you be? She wondered.

Podrick's breath was deep and even, and when she put her hand to his forehead it was cool. May the Mother be kind and the Smith guide the work of the maesters, she prayed silently. May the faces in the trees smile on him. The danger had passed, and she had this one thing to be thankful for. She slid her hand up to touch the dark waves of his hair, to trace the curve of his skull and feel the heartbeat that pulsed in his neck. Had she ever touched a sleeping man like this? Perhaps when she had been very tiny and crawled into bed with Robb or Jon. Now it would be possible only in a sickroom, only in these few precious stolen hours.

The bed was narrow, but there was space beside Podrick. With a glance at the door, she kicked off her slippers and lay down on the featherbed, gently so as not to disturb him. The sheets were still wet from his sweat. How much time passed she did not know, but finally she felt her eyes grow heavy, and she fell asleep curled up next to him.

_The night was peaceful and rich with smells and she was not afraid. Part of Sansa had been distressed, had raged and cried out, but then there had been a drink that tasted strange and that part of her was still there, but it had gone numb and quiet and was just watching. She was glad, because she knew something had been wrong but now that had passed. Everything was fine._

_A man was walking towards her, and she knew him. Father, she thought happily. He looked tired and sad. Sansa wished she could make him feel better, and she opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. Why couldn't she speak? But it didn't seem to bother Father, so she didn't worry about it. He sat down next to her and touched her hair, said her name. She smiled back at him. They sat together in the night and she was glad to be with him._

_And then there was another man there and she knew him too. Jory. He was her friend, but there was something in his hands. He handed the thing to her father. The numb, distant part of her stirred at the sight of it, tried to scream but no sound came out. Then the steel was at her throat and she died in a rush of blood._


	9. Chapter 9

The wheelhouse rocked as it rolled over another stone. Sansa adjusted the pillow under Tyrion's head and put a hand on his forehead. He batted it away irritably. "Stop fussing over me," he grumbled.

"Shut up and save your strength," Sansa told him, but without rancour. It felt like her mood was improving with every day they rode further from the Red Keep. Even her husband's growing fatigue and irritability could not dent her good humour.

The Small Council had split, with Tyrion, Garlan, and Sansa travelling with the court, and Davos Seaworth being left in charge in King's Landing with Robter and Varys to assist. Davos and Robter had been hard-pressed to conceal how much they were looking forward to several weeks without the presence of the highborn council members "fussing about" as Robter had been heard to say. She suspected that the two of them would have most of the problems of the realm sorted out before the rest of the council returned.

Harrenhal was a week's hard riding from the capital, which meant that the court was taking more than two weeks to cover the distance. Garlan was in charge of the progress of several hundred nobility, with associated households, baggage, horses, and wagons. On many days, Sansa had ridden out with Ermensande and other young girls of the court to escape the press of people.

Since they had turned west off the Kingsroad, they had travelled through thinly populated lands, under blue skies and through lush forests and meadows. These areas had once been thick with villages and farms, but most of the inhabitants had fled or met worse fates during the war and the winter that followed. A few hardy smallfolk had returned to work the rich farmlands around the lake. When they rode past settlements, rosy-cheeked young children ran out and pointed with excitement, while their elders, who might have scarred faces or missing limbs, tried to keep them out of the eyes of the nobility. A few days ago they had ridden over a hill thick with sheep and lambs, and seen the deep blue of the vast Gods Eye lake stretched before them.

Blissfully, Sansa and Tyrion had successfully managed to avoid each other for most of the trip, but she had joined him in the wheelhouse for their arrival at Harrenhal to give the appearance of unity. Now she dipped her fur-tipped brush into the pot, and briskly applied powder to Tyrion's cheeks and temple. He flinched away. "What is that stuff?" He grumbled. "Is that face paint?"

"Of course not," Sansa said indignantly. "I am the Lady of Winterfell and descended from eight thousand years of the Kings of Winter. You think I colour my cheeks like one of your whores?" She scrutinized him, decided he still looked pale, and added some more powder to his temples. Most of the nobility of the south would be at this festival, including the Lannister cousins, and neither she nor Tyrion wanted them to suspect how ill he truly was.

"I just hope Aegon is there," Tyrion fretted. "I don't know where he is, and I get nervous when I don't know where he is or what he is doing. Two weeks unsupervised, and he has a dragon. He could have been sleeping under the stars at Summerhall and writing poetry, drinking cheap wine and playing strip-cyvasse to lose in a brothel, or flying up to the Wall to challenge Jon to a fist-fight."

Sansa reflected that they would be able to determine if the last possibility had occurred based on whether Aegon had any teeth left. "That is assuming he could get Jon's attention."

"How is he?" Tyrion asked, his eyes sharp.

Sansa smiled. "Well," she said cheerfully. "Very busy with the reconstruction of the Wall, very uninterested in everything we are doing here. He sends you his regards." Tyrion looked sceptically at her, but she was grateful when he didn't pursue the issue.

An hour later, the court reached Harrenhal. Sansa stepped out of the wheelhouse, and stared at the castle. She had been told that Harrenhal was as vast as it was ruined, but she had never expected anything like the sight that lay before her. The sun had just set, and the towers gleamed against a deep purple sky while bats wheeled overhead. The surface of the stone was oddly smooth where it had melted like wax under dragon-breath, and the towers themselves had clearly sagged and dripped like candles before the onslaught.

Sansa shuddered at the thought of the people inside those towers and how they had died. Harren the Black had been a cruel king, she knew, killing thousands of enslaved riverlanders in the construction of the castle and sacrificing sacred weirwood for beams in the construction. Still, she wondered what manner of conqueror could be capable of such mercilessness to anyone. The Dragonlords had nearly completed their conquest of Westeros before they attacked Harrenhal, would a demonstration of their power not have been sufficient? Instead, they had chosen to engulf the castle and all its inhabitants in the flames.

She knew that some of the courtiers were unhappy about this excursion, and whispered of the curse of Harrenhal. Sansa had scoffed; the only curses she feared were those created by the actions of men. But now that she was here, she had an awed sense of the power in this place, built in the sight of one of the holiest places of the Old Gods. For all the horrors she knew the castle had seen, she felt no malice in its power, only a sense of watchfulness and a breath in the air that was like the whisper of something ancient and forgotten.

The huge yard was bustling with the arrival of the court, and there were plainly many lords already in attendance for the festivities. The sigils of the houses already present were proudly displayed, alongside the personal arms of the lords and knights who had attended. Sansa's heart lifted at the sight of the Rose of Highgarden, which indicated that Willas and Myranda had come, as well as her Uncle Edmure's leaping trout. Her own arms of the direwolf with a snowflake indicating her status as the current lord's sister was just being lifted into place. There was no sign of Roslin's personal arms: the twin towers combined with the trout, and Sansa was pleased that the Frey had decided to stay in Riverrun. She looked about eagerly for her uncle, but her heart sank at the sight approaching her. Lannisters.

A quick glance at Tyrion showed her husband looking equally dismayed, as Martyn Lannister and Joy Hill swept down on them, Janei trailing behind. Sansa and Tyrion looked at each other, then by unspoken agreement, looked around for an escape route. Nothing better than crawling under the wheelhouse being available, they were forced to endure the overly-enthusiastic greetings of the Lannister cousins. Sansa found herself swept into a very close, very intrusive, very touchy hug by Joy which seemed mostly intended to detect any signs that she might be pregnant. (Joy was close to Martyn, and Sansa's recent co-habitation with Tyrion had been the source of much consternation by the putative heir to Casterly Rock.) Sansa sourly reflected that Tyrion had gotten less of a feel on their wedding night.

Salvation appeared in the form of a Maester distributing dispatches and letters. Sansa heard her own name called out, and seized her chance. Tyrion gave her a surly glare as she abandoned him, took the letter, and fled into the castle. Inside was as busy as outside, with so many visitors forced into the habitable areas of the castle. Sansa was in the process of looking for a servant who could give her a wet cloth to scrub the Lannister off herself when she glanced at the letter she was carrying and her breath caught. It bore the seal of Castle Black. _Jon! _

She broke the seal and sat down on a bench to read.

_To Lady Sansa Stark, from Maester Samwell Tarly of Castle Black_

_I apologize on behalf of Prince Jon for his failure to reply to your recent letters. Regretfully, I must advise you that Jon suddenly departed for the waste north of the Wall on Viserion shortly after you rode south. Although it is not the first time he has left us in this manner, he has always returned in a matter of weeks. This time he has been absent for months, and although riders have seen Viserion flying in the distance, they have found no trace of Jon._

_If you will forgive my presumption, I assist Jon in his correspondence and in that capacity I have read all your letters from King's Landing. The contents of your last letter troubled me greatly. Although we do not know each other well, I do not believe you are a woman who is subject to harbouring fears without good reason. If your instincts tell you that there is danger then you should listen to them. My family are the Tarlys and as a man of the Reach, I know that the Martells make bad enemies. _

_If your position at court has become precarious, I urge you to leave without ceremony and seek the protection of your cousin Robert Arryn in the Vale or your Uncle Edmure at Riverrun. Trust that I speak for Jon in this matter. It was never his intention to send you into danger. I do not know what passed between you and Jon when you visited the Wall, but I saw Jon after, and I know that he was deeply grieved. I suspect that harsh words were exchanged on both sides._

_Jon is your brother, Lady Sansa, and he loves you. Do what you must to guard yourself. I am confident that he will return to us._

Sansa stared at the letter, dismayed. Jon was missing? Where had he gone? And to send her south and vanish from the Wall … she could not believe that Jon had survived all the battles at the Wall only to meet mischance in the woods … but what was the alternative? That he had sent her to his brother's court and simply forgotten about her? No. She could never believe that of Jon, she thought.

But a treacherous little voice in the back of her mind said that there had been a time she had thought that Robb would always rescue her from danger, and how wrong she had been proven. She held the letter in her hands and fought back tears. She was not a stupid girl, she reminded herself. She was a woman grown and could take care of herself.

Tarly's suggestion that she leave court was, of course, absurd and she dismissed it out of hand. Even in the unlikely event Aegon would grant her permission to leave with the Martell crisis brewing, she could never leave Tyrion now. She sighed, looking at the end of Tarly's letter again. Harsh words, he called that stupid, wretched fight on the Wall. His reassurances were kindly meant, she knew, but she had given Jon every reason to hate her. If only she had gone back and said she was sorry, but that chance had vanished and she could never take back what had been said.

She took a deep breath, folded the letter away, and went to find someone who could guide her to her chambers.

* * *

Sansa sat between Tyrion and Ermensande in the stands, waiting for the jousters to assemble. The squires were running to and fro, helping the knights with their armour, carrying lances, and ensuring lances and shields were close at hand before the tilting began. The spectators were in good spirits – half the nobility of the area was here. She exchanged waves with Myranda and Willas – the crippled Lord of Highgarden was not riding, but several of the horses he had bred and trained were in the lists today.

Sansa had spent an enjoyable previous evening with her uncle Edmure, who had astonished her with the news that he and Roslin had been invited to visit Winterfell – by Rickon. "Best thing Jon did," Edmure had said, "giving that boy a bit of responsibility to level him out. Robb was leading armies when not much older." Sansa had been stunned by the news that Rickon had been holding things together in the North, and that he was thinking of suggesting a marriage to Lyanna Mormont. Although Sansa had known that this day would come, she had never thought that she might lose the title of Lady of Winterfell before she ever managed to return there.

Suddenly Ermensande grabbed Sansa's arm. "A mystery knight," she breathed, her eyes shining with excitement. Following her gaze, Sansa saw the knight in question already ahorse at the end of the lines. Mystery knights always caused excitement among the spectators – they could be anyone from a famous jouster to a lowly squire. It was a risky strategy, though. A mystery knight garnered attention, and one who was unmasked after suffering a humiliating defeat might find the resulting reputation hard to live down.

This knight had more than the usual amount of coin, that much was clear. A pure black stallion, its glossy coat shining in the sun, stood steady under the knight's thighs, and the knight wore gold-washed armour. The man was of no more than average height and slimly built. Sansa wondered if it might be Loras Tyrell, who often rode as a mystery knight and hid the ruins of his once-handsome face.

There was a sudden clamour of voices raised in shock and fear. A shadow passed over the tourney grounds as Rhaegal soared silently overhead, barely higher than the tops of the flags on the knight's pavilions. Horses neighed and reared. One of the knights lost his seat, falling to the ground with a clang of armour. Rhaegal flapped his wings, and the sudden downdraft whipped Sansa's skirts and blew her hair into her eyes. When she brushed it back, she saw that the dragon had landed in the centre of the jousting field, and Aegon was standing by his side in riding leathers.

_Now that was an entrance_, she thought.

Rhaegal seemed to be in a good mood, opening and closing his wings, and making huffing noises as the horses moved nervously about under the dragon's eye. He swung his head about to contemplate the observers on the stands. Ermensande shrieked and grabbed at Sansa, who was tempted to do the same but forced herself to remain outwardly calm. _Don't even think about it, you overgrown lizard,_ she mentally told the beast. _I'm friends with your brother. _

Sansa was Viserion's favourite among the Stark siblings, likely because she didn't come with a direwolf. During Jon's visits to Winterfell, Viserion tended to look long-suffering. Shaggydog and Nymeria, and sometimes even Ghost, enjoyed trying to bite his tail, and Jon refused to allow him to set the wolves on fire. Sansa had on occasion tossed a chicken or two for Viserion to catch, and he had always seemed pleased to see her.

Aegon called to Rhaegal, a sharp command, and the dragon instantly retreated to his side. To Sansa's surprise, the dragon ducked his head to press against Aegon's body, and the king rubbed his brow ridges affectionately. Rhaegal rumbled with pleasure. It was a display she had never seen between Jon and Viserion. Aegon gave the dragon an affectionate smack. "Go on, now," he said, and Rhaegal sighed before spreading his wings and leaping into the air.

With the king present, the jousting was ready to start, although many of the horses took some time to calm down. The mystery knight was matched against Martyn Lannister. Martyn carried his sister Janei's lion-embroidered handkerchief on his lance. (Given the family history, Sansa thought, someone should have suggested he take the favour of a lady less closely related.) She and Tyrion agreed to wager a piece of silver on the outcome. There was no need for them to say which way they were betting; Tyrion always bet on his family and Sansa always bet against them.

Podrick had explained the art of jousting to Sansa more than once, although she had never been particularly motivated to study its intricacies. The rider, he had explained, was a conduit between the horse and the lance – the blow that unseated the other rider was struck by the horse, with the rider guiding the force of the charge to the target. Watching this mystery knight, Sansa understood for the first time what he had meant. As the black horse galloped toward the opponent, horse and rider moved like a single being. The tip of the lance was rock steady in the air. Just before the moment of contact, the knight rose in the saddle, driving the horse's strength squarely into the centre of Martyn's shield. The Lannister heir went down in a shower of splinters from the knight's broken lance, and the crowd gasped.

The mystery knight continued to ride well, and vanquished the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard in the final bout, to stand victorious before the royal couple. Aegon rose. "Unknown rider, you have been victorious against all challengers, and I declare you the victor of this tourney. Show your face so that we may congratulate you, and you may choose your Queen of Love and Beauty." His smile was knowing.

The rider pulled off their helm, and a thick braid of sweat-soaked black hair slid out. There was a chorus of excited murmurs from the spectators as they looked on the face of a young woman with black eyes and a widow's peak in her black hair. She gave her king a cool look, and bowed not-quite-deep enough for true courteously. "Well met, cousin," said Elia Sand, her voice cool.

Oh no, thought Sansa. As if she didn't have enough Martells to deal with. Still, she was curious to see another of the Sand Snakes. This young woman could not be more different from her sweet-faced older sister Tyene. Like her mother Ellaria Sand, whom Sansa had met at Joffrey's wedding years before, Elia was striking rather than truly beautiful but she had that same quality that drew the eye and that same fearless proud gaze. Looking at her cousins the King and Queen on their dais, she managed to give the impression that she was looking down her nose at them, although her gaze when she looked at Arianne at least had some warmth too it.

"Your invitation to come was a waste of my time, cousin, if this poor field is the best that you can bring against me." She told Aegon, no deference in her tone. She paused, looked at Arianne, and then looked away. "As for my Queen of Love and Beauty," she paused, and a sudden smile crossed her face. The grin brought her features to life and a sudden sparkle to her eyes. "Why, I carry the favour of no lady, and although there are women here I love," she tossed a wave to her sister and to Arianne, "no woman is my match where it counts. I must needs name myself."

Aegon smiled, and there was a wild light of amusement in his eyes. For a moment he and Elia looked very much alike. "So be it. I declare my kinswoman Elia champion and the Queen of Love and Beauty of our tournament at Harrenhall. Let the tournament be at an end, and all here go forth in peace." He rose, signifying that the jousting was at an end.

Elia Sand remained stationary for a moment, her horse motionless underneath her. She looked at her cousin, her eyes dark, a hint of wary suspicion on her face. Arianne approached, carrying the cushion with the wreath of roses on it, and the cousins embraced.

Aegon settled himself next to Tyrion. The smoky odour of dragon clung to his clothes, and the sun shone on his fair hair. Sansa found herself flushing and looked away quickly.

"Kind of you to join us, your grace," Tyrion said caustically. "Although you took a long time to make a day's flight to Harrenhal."

Aegon grinned. The time seemed to have erased much of his previous ill humour. "Good to see you too, old friend," he said, clasping Tyrion on the shoulder. "I keep telling you to come flying with me. Being in the air – there is nothing like it. I'm sure Rhaegal is big enough to bear your weight."

"Maybe in another year," said Tyrion, although his eyes had momentarily brightened. "Lets not take any risks." He frowned curiously. "So, a tourney at Harrenhal, with an Elia as the Queen of Love and Beauty."

Aegon shrugged, but his eyes were far away. "My cousin Elia likes to crown herself when she wins at tournaments. I suppose it means nothing to the dead, but it gives me some small satisfaction."

"What do you mean?" asked Ermensande, frowning.

"Before Robert's Rebellion, in the year of the false spring, there was a tourney here," Sansa explained quietly. "Prince Rhegar won, but he chose Jon's mother Lyanna as the Queen of Love and Beauty. Some say she had ridden in the lists as a mystery knight they called the Knight of the Laughing Tree."

"My father passed over my mother and his wife, Princess Elia." Aegon added, his eyes dark. "I never knew her, but … she didn't deserve to be scorned by my father. I don't understand him. I've never understood him or what he did. Two years later he went off with Lyanna, left my mother and sister to die. My head would have been smashed against a wall by the Mountain that Rides."

Tyrion raised the cup of wine he had been drinking from. "To bad fathers," he said.

Aegon nodded. "To fathers, and all that they do. What say you, Lady Sansa? People speak well of Ned Stark, even if no friend to my family. I suppose he cannot be blamed for his sister's wildness."

"He was a very good man," Sansa answered. "He loved his sister enough to hide her son, but he raised his daughters to listen to Septas and pursue the womanly arts over horseback riding and weaponry." But then, she thought sadly, he had so welcomed Arya's wildness when she had refused to follow the path marked out for her. Sansa wondered what her father would have thought of her. "Perhaps not to bad fathers," she added, "but just to fathers, and the mistakes they make."

Aegon laughed, and signalled for more wine. "To fathers."

She glanced up, and saw that Elia had sat down beside Arianne and Tyene. She had removed the top half of her armour, and was clad only in a rough singlet that left her smoothly muscled arms bare. She wore the garland of red roses on her sweat-drenched hair. Elia was looking towards them, and her dark eyes were filled with anger and suspicion. Obviously, Sansa thought, directed at me. Who else could she have cause to hate? Sansa dropped her eyes, and resolved to avoid the Martells as much as possible.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N – Thanks so much to all my reviewers, people who have favourited, and who are following. Just a reminder of the warnings on this story, some of which pertain to this chapter and the next.

* * *

Ermensande held up the cloth-of-gold dress. "I like this one. I think it shows the wealth of House Hayford," she said.

"It does look expensive," Sansa agreed, struggling to keep her expression neutral. _That dress looks like a rat birthed a litter in a courtesan's jewellery box, _she thought."I think the style is too mature. The pink myrish lace dress is the one you should wear." Sansa held up the pink dress for Ermensande to admire. It had an underskirt of deep rose covered with green lace, and the boat neck was edged with a pattern of flowers that was mirrored in the design of the lace.

Ermensande made a face. "The Queen of Thornes wears clothes less frumpy than that."

"We could have your maids find some flowers to braid into your hair and you would look like Jenny of Oldstones. Put the lace dress on and let me see how it looks."

"Boring. It will look boring." Ermensande sighed and vanished behind a screen to change.

Sansa poured herself a cup of Dornish red wine. If she couldn't get the gold dress away from Ermensande, maybe she could tip her drink over it. She had dressed for the evening's feast already, her white Samite dress embroidered with vines and butterflies and a silver circlet that had been a gift from Rickon in one of his affectionate moods. The day was bright and beautiful - the late afternoon sun was shining on the deep blue waters of the lake. Sansa wished she had found time to walk by the shores of the lake and feel the sun on her skin. She was tired, and worried about the feast tonight, all the potential for conflict that brewed whenever the nobility of the realm gathered.

There was a knock on her door, and Sansa rose to open it. Brella was waiting, a Lannister guard behind her. The woman's face was creased with anxiety. "My lady, the King sent for Lord Tyrion saying it was urgent, but he was exhausted following the tournament. In truth," the woman said, lowering her voice, "I think he is in some pain but he won't admit it. He says he needs some time to dress and compose himself. I was wondering if you could …"

"Of course," Sansa said, "I can go and find out what the problem is. Send someone to find Garlan, too. He rode in the jousts today, so he should be changing in his quarters." She put a hand on Brella's shoulder. "Don't let word get back to the Martells. This could involve them." The older woman nodded, and Sansa was relieved that she could rely on her discretion. She wished she could tell Tyrion not to come, that she and Garlan could handle the problem, but she doubted Aegon would take kindly to her countermanding his summons. "Tell Tyrion to come when he is able, but not to strain himself." Brella looked grateful, and she hastened away, leaving the guard to escort Sansa.

Ermensande emerged wearing the pink dress. "I assume you heard," Sansa said. "Keep your mouth shut. I have to go, but I promise to see you at the feast. Go and send your maids to find the flowers."

"I don't want to be Jenny. I want to wear the gold dress." Ermensande rolled her eyes. "And I don't want to have to sit with Janei and Martyn at the feast."

Sansa kissed the girl's brow. "You look lovely, sweetling," she said. "I'll be there to protect you from the Lannisters, I promise. Trust me. Now go on, and I will see you soon."

* * *

Sansa found Aegon standing staring out the window, with a scrap of parchment in his hand. "Your grace?" she said softly when the door had shut behind her, not wanting to startle him. "Tyrion is delayed, but I thought I might be able to assist. I've sent for Garlan."

He turned and looked at her, and then smiled. "Thank you for coming, Lady Stark. Sending for Garlan was a good thought. There is a dispatch from Oldtown I would appreciate your thoughts on." He extended the document to her.

Sansa took it and scanned the contents, then read it again more slowly. "A conclave of the maesters at the request of Maester Alleras. This makes no mention of any outcome as yet. It does not even say what they are discussing." Although she could guess.

Aegon shook his head and pushed his hand through his hair in an impatient gesture. "Obviously the Martells are pushing for a declaration by the entire conclave that Arianne is still fertile. My questions are this – will they get it, and if so, what does it mean?"

"The politics of the Citadel are outside my area of expertise. For that we will have to wait for the others. Garlan would know best – his mother is a Hightower of Oldtown. But if they do make the declaration…" her voice trailed off, and she shook her head. "Your Grace, you were raised in Essos, you may not understand the power the maesters have. Every highborn child in your realm was taught by a maester. They watch our steps from our first days. If the conclave passes this decision against you, it will be very difficult to challenge them. You may not be able to set Arianne aside, at least not for some years."

_This is wonderful,_ she thought, although she was careful to keep her expression neutral. _If the Martells can get what they want from the maesters, then the crisis is done for a time. Arianne's position is safe. Hopefully all the fears about her fertility will prove groundless, and there will be an heir within the year. Tyrion will be able to retire knowing the realm is secure, and Garlan as Hand will balance the Martell power. _

"Can we prevent it?" Aegon asked. "Aside from the issue of Arianne, I dislike the maesters taking such a direct role in the affairs of the realm. These decisions should be in my hands."

"No one has absolute power, your grace. Not even a king," she said.

"Not even a dragonrider?"

"Not unless you are prepared to burn the Citadel down."

Aegon hissed with annoyance, and turned away. "I can't control the Maesters, or the Faith, or the followers of the Red God. I have no coin to rebuild the roads, and my justice does not extend beyond the capital. My Queen plots behind my back and my half-brother thumbs his nose at me from the North."

"You are the king," Sansa said softly. "No one said it would be easy."

Aegon shook his head, but his expression cleared and he looked calm again. "Sit down, please" he told her, gesturing to a table and chairs at the window, overlooking the bright blue of the lake. In the distance, the Isle of the Faces was green on the horizon, with a glimmer of weirwood groves on its hills. "Do you want some wine while we wait?"

She accepted a cup, more to settle him than anything, but did no more than wet her lips. A white sailed ship was making its way toward the castle, and she wondered if it was carrying goods for the harvest festival. With the court in residence, the town must be seeing more excitement than it had in the previous seven years combined. She said as much to Aegon.

"The castle needs a lord," he agreed. "Since the last of the Whents passed, the titular lord has been your Uncle Edmure. I may suggest that he pass the castle to his second son if he has another. Of course, he might choose to make it his eldest daughter's dowry." He paused. "Speaking of which, he tells me that he has promised you his eldest daughter to a northern marriage."

"He has," Sansa answered, her mind still on the implications of the Maester's conclave. "My preference is the heir to either the Umbers or the Karstarks if I can arrange it."

"Why?"

She blinked, and refocused to answer his question. "Both families are important bannermen to my brother, and the marriage would tie the Riverlands closer to the North," she said cautiously. "We depend greatly on the trade that we bring in from the southern lands. The Lords Paramount north of the Trident are all family these days, which did much to save our people during the last Winter."

"Ah, yes, the great Northern Alliance. Catelyn Tully wed to Eddard Stark, and Lysa Tully to Jon Arryn. Three domains sharing borders, close family ties, and trade agreements to mutual advantage."

"Some agreements, yes, of course."

"Oh, don't be modest. What is the North's production of iron ore this year, exactly?"

Sansa felt a sudden chill. "I … would have to look the number up." It was a lie. She knew the number. She knew the text of the agreements she had negotiated to sell that ore, and the impact of those agreements on mining in the southern part of Westeros. She had thought, had assumed, that nobody would notice. "I suppose production has gone up since the war," she admitted.

"You suppose," he mimicked her, his voice sharp. "Those three kingdoms in the north are strong together: strong enough that they don't need the rest of Westeros. They even have their own dragon now. Tell me, Lady Stark, how did that come to pass? Edmure Tully is an affable fool, Robert Arryn is weak, and Rickon Stark is a child. Who maintains that alliance?" He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "You do. Kind, pretty Sansa Stark, writing letters and engineering marriages, diverting money from my coffers and stealing labour from my projects."

She stared at him, stunned and suddenly frightened. It was true enough, she knew. She had worked for years to strengthen the alliance north of the trident. Robb had died for that alliance, she thought, how could she have let it crumble? And like an arrogant fool, she had assumed that nobody was clever enough to see what she was doing.

She had been wrong.

"Every family works to their own benefit," she said quietly.

"Yes," he said. He looked away from her, gazing out over the lake, his face contemplative. The white sailed boat was tacking against the wind, she noted with some detached part of her mind, its sails flapping as it came about. The sun was shining. "But not every family controls the land and resources of more than half my kingdom."

Tyrion, she thought, where in the Seven Hells are you? She cursed herself for having told Brella that he need not hurry. "The Starks have done fealty to your throne …"

His eyes snapped back to her, and she knew she had said the wrong thing. "Oh yes, bent the knee, just as Torrhen Stark did three hundred years ago. And just like they always have, the Starks mouth fealty and do as they please. Nothing is done in the North unless a Stark condescends to carry out the order. At least in the day of my ancestors, the Starks had the sense to stay in their frozen wasteland. Remind me why your precious alliance with the Tullys and the Arryns came to pass?"

"I concern myself with the future, not the past. Trade agreements ..."

"The Northern Alliance was formed to crush House Targaryen. My father, mother, sister, and grandfather were killed and our dynasty fell. I grew up in exile, always hiding from people who wanted me dead. When I retook my throne, my brother stole the woman I should have married, who should have been the mother of my heirs. Despite all that, I would offer you the chance to be Queen, and you throw it back in my face." He took the paper from her suddenly numb fingers, spread it on the table between them. "The maesters defy me, and you can barely conceal your smiles. Tell me, are all the Starks as arrogant as you and my brother, the Ice Maiden of Winterfell and the Prince who was Promised? Tell me that, Lady Sansa, and make sure you smile as sweetly as you always do when you lie."

She stood up and pushed her chair back, made to go for the door. As quick as a striking snake, he grabbed her wrist. "Sit down," he said. "We aren't finished. We haven't even started."

Frozen in terror, she sank down into the chair, staring at his hand where it grasped her wrist. His fingers were long and they overlapped around her wrist, his grip strong. It felt like his hand was the only thing she could see. She could feel her breath shuddering in her chest. "Tyrion and Garlan are coming," she breathed.

"No," Aegon said. "I had Brella lie to you. I never sent for Tyrion."

There was a moment of disbelief and then she stopped breathing and it was as if ice water had been poured into her guts. Aegon was watching her with a half-smile on his face, that same familiar, beloved half-smile that she had seen so many times on Jon's face. That smile had lulled her into a false trust, had blinded her to so much. She saw it all now, and she understood what he intended.

"Please," she breathed. "I didn't … I won't … I …. Please." She didn't have to make her voice tremble or sound weak. The only wonder was that she was able to speak at all. As his smile deepened, with her free hand she grabbed her cup of wine and threw it in his face. She yanked her arm free and sprinted for the door, and there was a moment she thought she might reach it.

Then she was on the floor, the stone cold underneath her. His weight was on her and she struggled, knowing it was useless. He flipped her over, and there was nothing she could do as he pinned her wrists over her head, holding them both with one of his hands, so easily as if it was nothing at all even as she fought to get free. She was weak and pathetic as the fabric of her dress ripped, and there was only one thought in her mind – escape. Get away. Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement outside the window, and she wrenched herself out of her body, and suddenly –

Wings. She had wings, and her heart was racing in her chest, her breath coming rapid and shallow, but the pain was gone and she was flying, no falling, but then her wings were beating and she was flying higher and higher, and all she knew was that she was flying away. Free.


	11. Chapter 11

She had been a bird, but that bird had flown until its heart had failed and it had fallen dead from the air. Now she was huddled naked on the floor, clutching the torn dress against her chest. The air felt like ice despite the fire in the room, despite the warmth of the late afternoon air. She was leaning against the stones and wood surrounding the hearth. _Weirwood_, she thought with some distant, detached part of her mind. _Dead weirwood from the Isle of the Faces, cut down by Harren the Black in his arrogance three hundred years ago._ She ran her finger back and forth along the line where the wood met the stone. Both were hard and cold. They say there is blood in the mortar, she thought, and that thousands of men died in the quarries to mine this stone.

She didn't look up as Aegon's footsteps sounded behind her, or as he settled himself gracefully onto the floor next to her. He was dressed for the feast in a gold and black embroidered doublet. He held out a pot to her. "That's oil infused with arnica," he said affably. "It's good for bruises. I got knocked around a lot when I first took Rhaegal."

Silently, she took the pot from him. It was blue glazed pottery with a cork in the top. Pretty, she thought, turning it in her hand.

Aegon sighed, got up, and walked away. In a moment she heard him returning, felt something soft around her shoulders. A blanket, a wool blanket. "You are in shock," he said. "I thought at first that you might not recover. Stay warm by the fire, it will pass. I will say you felt ill and sent your apologies for the feast tonight."

They would be gathering now, she thought, her uncle, her husband, some of her dearest friends, even the Lannister cousins. They would be laughing together, downstairs in the Hall of the Hundred Hearths. They would be plotting and arguing. She recalled that she had been worried about tonight, about what would happen at that feast. Aegon was still here, watching her. He had said he would tell them … at the feast …

"You aren't going to kill me, then," she said. She had a momentary vision of her body being dropped into the lake, her throat slit, vanishing into the deep blue with her hair trailing out. It was a peaceful image. Then she felt the breath in her lungs, felt her muscles working as she shivered, and knew she didn't want to die. Her mind began to come back with that realization. She forced her gaze up, to look directly at Aegon.

His expression was calm, steady. Under his long lashes, his eyes looked almost black. He considered her question, and quirked an eyebrow. "You mean as a way of ensuring your silence? I had not planned on it."

"Can … can I go back to Winterfell?"

"No."

She felt her breath catch and a sob started to build. "I swear, I won't tell anyone. I promise."

He reached out and took the pot from her, placed it carefully on the hearth. Then he took her hand, and laced his fingers through hers, running his thumb across her palm. "You have choices," he said, "about what you will do. You can leave this room, go down to the Hall, and accuse me of rape before all the gathered lords and knights. You can cry for the protection of your kin, your precious Northern Alliance. Perhaps they will believe you, and fight to remove me off my throne and avenge your honour." He smiled, a light in his eyes. "Naming Elia the Queen of Love and Beauty gave me some satisfaction, but nothing that would be compared to what I would feel fighting Robert's Rebellion again, this time with a dragon on the Targaryen side. The outcome would be very different this time, I assure you. There would be no battle in the fords, no ruby breastplate smashed under a war hammer. Only the fire. You know, better than almost anyone, what a dragon's fire can do to human flesh."

"You cannot take the North, there is …" She stopped, and gasped.

Aegon smiled calmly. "Brothers fight about so many things. Land, inheritances, an insult … a woman. Ask Jon for help if you wish. When he comes for you, if he comes, then we will find out who is the better dragonrider, who is the heir of the dragonlords." His dark wine-coloured eyes were almost dreamy. "It would be something to see, the sons of Rhaegar battling in the air. Then everyone would know who the true King of Westeros is. Everyone who survived, that is, as the flames rain down from the sky."

Tears silently began to trickle down her cheeks, dripped onto the naked skin at her collarbone.

"Or maybe all those people downstairs who love you, who are allied with your family, maybe they will think of what would happen if they challenged me. Maybe your friends Willas and Myranda will look at their children and at the melted walls of this castle. Maybe they will all think about the limits of their love for you when faced with a second Field of Fire." He paused to take a corner of the blanket and wipe the tears from her cheeks.

"And their doubts may be real," he continued. "If confronted, I will say that we lay together in a moment of passion and that you are blaming me in regret for your disgrace. Most of the court knows you were in my arms while Arianne was in the birthing bed. Brella and the guard who escorted you will say you came here of your own free will, alone, a most extraordinary thing for a lady to do. You will be shamed as a fornicator and as a liar. Since we are both married, you would also be an adulteress. If I recall correctly," he added, contemplatively, "Cersei Lannister was forced to walk naked through the streets of Kings Landing as her penance for lying with men, and she was a widow. I don't even know what would happen to you. Even if you were able to return to Winterfell, the shame would follow you and your family all your life."

She closed her eyes and shuddered, feeling the tears welling even behind her closed eyelids. She imagined Rickon's face, Arya's. Jon's words from the Wall echoed in her ears. _"Like you have never told a lie, Sansa," he had said. "Arya told me."_ And she had. She had lied for Joffrey, and her wolf had died as if the Old Gods had judged her unworthy of her protector.

"Now, in the alternative," he said, and she opened her eyes, "you may choose not to make a complaint against me. Everything will be as if this," he gestured to the room, "never happened. After the festival, the court will return to King's Landing, where you will continue your excellent work on the Small Council as my advisor. The realm will continue to rebuild from the horrors of the war and the winter, and there will be peace. There will be no reason for my brother to leave the Wall, and I will be content for him to live and die in that frozen wasteland. Discretely, and in private," he continued, "you will be my lover." He smiled at her look of horror. "Which, I assure you, which is what would have occurred if you had not been so stubborn, and which you will find far more pleasant than what just happened. In time, you may even become Queen, with all the honours of the position, and with the children you so desperately want. It would be fitting," he added, "for a Stark to be the one to continue the Targaryen dynasty, when your family nearly ended it."

Lyanna had been young and foolish, but Sansa was a woman grown who had seen war and death, who knew the consequences of her actions and the harsh truth of her world. She had seen war and death, known hunger and fear. "I won't tell anyone," she said. "But I will never be your … your … _lover_."

"We shall see," he said cheerfully. "I am sorry about your dress. I'll buy you a new one. There is a gown of Arianne's you can wear to get back to your quarters; if you wait until after the feast has started there shouldn't be anyone in the hallways." He cupped her face in his hands, leaned in, and kissed her forehead. "We'll talk again later." He rose, then stopped. "And when your Podrick gets better, you might want to consider finding some way to get rid of him. I don't care one way or another, but keeping him around seems ... cruel."

The door closed behind him, and Sansa was alone. She touched the painful spot between her legs and her fingers came away covered in blood. She stared at it for a moment, then revulsion overwhelmed her and she dashed the blood across the wood and stone of the hearth. The burning flames wavered and blurred, and she buried her face in her arms as sobs shook her body. She didn't know how long she cried, but when she raised her head the afternoon light had turned golden-pink with the setting sun.

The only hope she had would be to run. If she could disappear into the countryside and lose herself amongst the small folk, somewhere that the Spider could not find her, long enough to get to take ship in a port, to flee. But where? Who would be willing to give her refuge; who would she be prepared to expose to the dragon's wrath? All she knew was that she was alone, as she always had been since she had ridden out of the gates of Winterfell when she was eleven years old, as she had been in all the darkest times in her life. The girl who had left Winterfell all those years ago had hoped and loved and trusted, but that girl had been gentle and foolish, and the last part of her had died here in this room.

Sansa felt through the folds of her dress until her fingers touched the round smooth shape of the silver pin. She ran her fingers across the hidden catch the silversmith had fashioned for her, but found it jammed. So. Raising the broach, she smashed it against the stone until it shattered and released its hidden contents. The mocking bird pin fell into the palm of her hand. The silver had been bright when she had given it to the silversmith, as bright as it had been when Petyr Baelish had worn it at his throat, as bright as it had been the day she had paid the iron price and made it her own.

She combed her hair with her fingers and washed herself at a basin she found. Then she put on Arianne's dress. It was Dornish in style – a flowing length of saffron-dyed silk embroidered with the sun and spear motif that hit Sansa at mid-calf. Her own gown was torn from neck to hip, the white samite stained, the bright butterflies dimmed with filth from the floor. She used it to wipe the blood from the hearth stones, then built the fire up and tossed the dress onto it. The flames leapt up, consuming it until there was nothing left but ash.

* * *

_Jon_

_I hope and pray that this letter will find you safely returned to the Wall. I said unkind things the last time we met. I am deeply sorry. You have always conducted yourself with honour, and the father who raised us both would have been proud of you. I understand now that your duty is at the Wall, and I was wrong to suggest otherwise. Know that my prayers to the Seven and to the Old Gods are for your safety and that you find some measure of happiness. _

_My last letter distressed Sam. In truth I was distraught and angry over what happened to Podrick. There is more - Tyrion Lannister is dying. He has maintained the peace these last years more than any of us understood and his passing will shake the foundations of the realm. Although it is likely not necessary, I may take Maester Tarly's advice and go to family at Riverrun or the Eyrie for a time. Do not fear for me._

_You were of the North before you ever were a Targaryean, and our words are not fire and blood. We do not seek vengeance against our enemies. Winter is coming. Please, I beg of you for the love that you bore for my father and for Robb, and your love and devotion to Arya, Bran, and Rickon, please no matter what happens, no matter what occurs and what you may hear, _do not leave the Wall.

_I am sorry, Jon. I tried._

_Sansa_

A/N: This is the end of Sansa's POV, and from this point the story will be continued through Jon's eyes.

Thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed, favorited, and followed. This is my first fic in many years, and your encouragement means so much to me. One review was emailed to me but vanished from the site – I'm not sure why. If the writer of the comment is reading, thank you for posting.

There will be a break before the next set of updates; since this is a plot-intensive story, I do try to have at least a rough draft of the section before I post so that I don't write myself into a corner. Please don't think I have abandoned the story.

Regarding Sansa's decision at the conclusion of this chapter that she won't tell anyone about the rape - I realize some people may be shocked and upset about it. Without writing an essay about the treatment of victims of crime (a topic I have strong feelings about), Sansa's actions are a reasoned reaction to her circumstances and come out of her history and her position in the society of Westeros. Even in the real world, people make this sort of decision every day. At the same time, I hope that nobody will think that I am advocating for victims of crime to remain silent and not seek help. Sansa's decision is very much a product of her history of abuse. She doesn't consider that anyone she might approach, like Jon, might understand the dangers she faces and be able help her without starting a war. If anyone is or knows a victim of crime, help is available.


	12. Chapter 12

"There is blood on the stones." As Jon stared, Bran opened his eyes, stretched his fingers as if in supplication. Bran's gaze was blank and empty. He opened his mouth, as if to say something more, but no sound came out. Something white moved inside, where his tongue should have been. A weirwood root burst from his mouth, grew rapidly longer and thicker until it trailed down Bran's chest, writhing like a snake. Jon scrambled though the roots entwined around his brother to try to rip him free. The roots wrapped themselves around Jon's arms and legs and he went down, feeling wood move against his chest and the breath being choked from his lungs.

He struggled against the moving roots, but Bran was gone, and the things wrapped around him were not roots, they were fingers, dead fingers. Jon cried out in panic and terror, scrambling backwards only to encounter more grasping hands, more dead faces. They were faces he knew, his brother Robb and Catelyn Stark, their eyes shining blue in rotting flesh, Rodrick and Jory Cassel, the skin dropping from their bodies. Behind them was Eddard Stark with his greatsword in his hands and a great slash across his neck, his dead face implacable. They advanced towards him on all sides, and he had no weapon, but he beat at them with his fists and kicked at them with his feet.

He broke free and ran through the darkness, hearing the shambling feet close behind him, until he was no longer running on stone but climbing on ice, feeling the dead hands grasping at his heels. The Wall was slick under his hands, as treacherous as when he had braved it with Ygritte, and he could feel pieces breaking under his fingers as he climbed. His muscles were burning, and he scrambled upwards desperate with terror. His hands were slipping, and they were so cold, he was losing his grip –

A strong hand reached down and took his. Jon looked up to see Jeor Mormont quirk an eyebrow as he roughly pulled Jon up to the top of the Wall. "Thank you for honouring us with your presence, Lord Snow. I hope we have not inconvenienced you." Jon nearly wept at the relief of seeing him, of being safe. Mormont just turned away as if he had helped Jon down off a horse and he judged Jon weak for needing the aid.

The Wall was manned by those he remembered from the final fight: Black Brothers, Northerners, Wildling, Unsullied, Ironborn, Knights of the Vale. Jon walked among them, seeing familiar faces. They were all pale and grey, shadows of the people he had fought beside. Except one.

At first he only saw the man's back, the sweep of long silver hair and the golden armour. As Jon walked towards him, the man turned, and Jon saw the flash of red rubies, the wine-dark purple eyes filled with melancholy. "Father," he said to Rhaegar.

"My son," Rhaegar answered, a fierce pride in his eyes. "You held the Wall. Again, and again, you met the darkness and defeated it. You are the Prince that was Promised, the product of everything I worked for."

"Yes, I held it," Jon said bitterly. "I ate turnips and shivered in the cold. You went to battle in rubies, and I went in rags. Did your visions let you smell the rotting flesh of the dead, father?"

"You are both the wolf and the dragon: ice and fire. It was your destiny, what was prophesized."

"It was my life! The choice was not yours to make."

"No," Rhaegar answered. "The choice was yours, my son, to guard the realms of men. That is your duty."

"My duty is done," Jon answered, but even as he spoke he heard the scratching of the dead climbing the Wall. "How many people died for your visions? My mother died. You left your wife and children to the mercy of an invading army. If you wanted to fight the darkness, you should have marched to the Wall. Steel and dragonglass would have done more to fight the enemy than all your prophesies and songs."

"You were the Prince that was Promised," Rhaegar repeated, and Jon saw the gleam of madness in those beautiful violet eyes. He backed away from Rhaegar, turned, and began to run through the ghostly defenders.

He stumbled and fell onto his knees on the ice, looked up to see a small, slender figure with fire behind her. Daenerys smiled down at him, and he wept and pressed his face into her belly. The breath shuddered through him and he breathed in her scent of sweat and smoke even as he heard the rising clamour of the dead. "You stink, Stormborn," he murmured.

He felt her pull him up until she was looking up into his eyes. Her face was dark with fatigue, her eyes hot with anger. "My dragons were a miracle," she cried out in fury and grief.

Jon took her in his arms, felt her body shake against his. "What is wrong, Dany? We can fight it together, you and I. Tell me." He held her close, and they huddled together from the wind like children. Then she pulled back, and it was Sansa in his arms – Sansa as he had last seen her on the wall with her ice blue cape and dress whipping in the wind. "Why did you forget about me, Jon?" she asked. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but when he touched them they were made of ice. She held up her fingers and he saw that they were stained with blood. As he watched, the blood thickened and dripped until it was thick dark rivets running down her arms and falling onto the ice.

"I never forgot," Jon said, taking her hands, slick with blood, into his own. The wind was howling around them, and he felt her grip sliding out of his. She staggered in the wind and fell onto the ice, leaving him with nothing but the blood on his hands. Behind him, he heard a scrape, whirled, and saw the first of the dead coming over the top of the wall. He ran to Sansa's side, reached to grab her shoulders and pull her up, and felt nothing but cold beneath his fingers. He brushed the hair away from her face, and her skin had turned to ice, with colours flashing and moving beneath the skin like an Other. She looked at him uncomprehendingly. "Who are you?" she asked.

"Sansa, it's Jon," he told her.

She shook her head. "Who are you?" she asked again, her voice insistent.

"Lord Snow." Stannis' voice was hard. "She is lost. You have a duty to defend the realm I died for. Do not let my people bleed."

"I can't leave her," Jon yelled back at him, but he could see the dead coming over the Wall, coming for him in their dozens and hundreds, and even as he held Sansa close, they went down under the weight of the attackers, and he knew that this time there would be no rescue, no hope -

* * *

Jon gasped, and woke. Rolling upright, he found himself with his dagger in his hand staring around an empty chamber. The soft lantern by his bed left shadows in the corner of the rock walls; he stared into them, his breath shuddering in his chest, waiting to see if there was movement in the darkness. Nothing. He rolled out of the sleeping furs and took the lantern, moving around the walls so that nothing could come behind him. The shadows were empty. Jon slid down into a seated position and buried his face in his hands. Not real, he told himself. None of it was real.

The sound of footsteps in the passage outside reached his ear, and he hastily sheathed the dagger and rubbed his hands over his face. Leaf pushed aside the hangings and stood in the doorway. The Child did not attempt to approach him, for which Jon was grateful, and her eyes were gentle and knowing. "You dreamed again, Prince Jon," she said.

"Yes," he admitted. It was still strange to hear himself called a Prince, stranger to think that Leaf had travelled in the south for centuries while his Targaryen ancestors ruled. She had told him tales of seeing a young Daena the Defiant riding in the woods with her bow, of her son Daemon Blackfyre's death when brother fought brother for the throne. She had seen the dragons fly, and battle each other, and vanish. He wondered what she had thought when dragons had returned to the skies of Westeros.

"The greenseer has awoken. He says he will speak to you outside, if that is your wish." Jon nodded, thankful that Bran was not going to ask him to enter the cave of the weirwood roots, with his strange throne and the murmur of the dark river coming from the abyss.

When Leaf withdrew, Jon splashed water on his face and waited for his breathing to steady. Then he slipped out through the dim passageways of the caves, passing the Children as they went about their business and spoke to each other in their own tongue. Sometimes he heard their songs echo off the stones, and it eased the tension he still carried from his dream.

Emerging out onto the hillside, he found the sunlight temporarily blinded him. He waited until his eyes adjusted to the light. The cool air of the far north was a relief after the terror of the dream and the confinement of the caves. Walking up the hill, he chose a route that avoided passing through any groves of trees. (The branches, he thought, were like bony hands reaching out to grasp him.) At the top of the hill, there was a flat rock in the sunlight with a view of the surrounding lands in the shadow of the giant weirwood tree. He settled there.

After a few minutes, there was a rustle in the trees, and the white form of Ghost padded out to silently sit beside him. From above, the shadow of Viserion passed overhead, then again as the dragon wheeled and turned in the air. He hovered over Jon and Ghost, his golden eyes watching them. There was blood on his muzzle. "Have you hunted, boy?" Jon stretch out his mind to the dragon's. He did not attempt a full joining, but only dipped briefly into the caldron of fire that was the thoughts of the dragon. He received a brief image of elk running through the forest, and Viserion following them in the air. "Was it good?" Viserion blinked, and then soared away as Jon released him. Jon closed his eyes and leaned back into Ghost's fur, knowing that Ghost would keep watch for any danger.

Jon heard Summer coming up the hillside through his wolf's ears long before his own senses would have alerted him to visitors. Bran's direwolf barked and stretched out his front legs to Ghost, inviting his litter mate to play, and the two huge beasts gambolled about the hilltop together.

Jon blinked, and when his eyes opened, Bran was sitting silently, companionably, next to him.

"Leaf said you had another dream."

"It was the usual, Bran," Jon said shortly. "The Wall, the dead. I lose the war every night in my dreams. Tell me it isn't real."

"My sight covers all the North, everywhere that the weirwoods grow. There is peace. If the Others were to come again, I would know it. What you have feared will not come to pass in our lifetimes."

"I know that now," Jon said. "But I see it over and over again, every night. Everyone I love is in danger. It feels so real." He hesitated. "Last night I saw Sansa, and she had turned to ice in my arms." He waited for Bran to reassure him. Instead, Bran was silent for a long time.

Finally, Bran spoke, but his response was not what Jon has expected. "What do you know of magic, Jon?"

"Only what you have told me," Jon answered.

"There are many forms of power in our world. The Old Gods see through the faces on the trees, and even south of the Neck there are places holy to them. The Isle in the lake called the Gods Eye, where the trees still grow, is the greatest of them. On the shores of that lake is another, the castle of Harrenhal. It is a place of darkness, and my sight is clouded there. But last night I saw blood on the stones of Harrenhal."

Jon's head snapped up as Bran repeated the words from his dream.

"I looked into the weirwoods, into the past and the present. I am not sure, but I think that Sansa may have gone to Harrenhal."

"Harrenhal." Jon remembered Old Nan's stories of the place. He frowned. "Why would Sansa go to a half ruined dusty castle full of bats? She's in King's Landing, on the Small Council. She's cross with me for neglecting my duties as Regent." He looked down. There had been reason for her ire, he thought in shame. "But … she's doing well on the Council. In her last letter she said that Aegon's heir will be born soon. There is no reason for her to have left the capital."

"Jon," Bran said gently. "You have been with us for six moons."

"No. That's not possible." Jon sat stunned. He thought back to the first days after he had found the caves, when nights and days had blurred together and he had not known Bran or the Children for who they were. He remembered the first days they had been able to coax him into the sunlight, of slowly regaining his will to eat and speak. He had known that time had passed while he returned to himself, but … six moons. Six moons. Anything could have happened. He thought of his dream of Sansa, and the blood on his hands. He rubbed his fingers together as if he could still feel the sticky damp of it. Jon stared at Bran in slowly rising dread, uttered the fear that had been with him for so long: "Could she be dead?" He had seen the people he loved die so many times in so many dreams – Sansa, Arya, Rickon, Sam. He had seen the already dead die again and again: Ned Stark, Robb, Ygritte, Daenyrs. If Sansa had died in the south, where he had sent her …

"No," Bran said with certainty. "Sansa is my sister. More than that, she was the Stark in Winterfell these last years. If she had died at Harrenhal, I would know."

Jon closed his eyes, letting a wave of relief pass over him. The things I fear are not real, he reminded himself. He took a deep breath. "I have to go south," he said. "I've stayed here too long."

"Jon," Bran said. "Are you certain about this?"

"No," he admitted. "But I cannot stay here forever. If something is happening in the south, and Sansa is involved, then I have a responsibility to help her. And if it is nothing," he shook his head. "I still have a responsibility." But even as he said it, there was another small voice in the back of his mind. I could see the castles of my ancestors, it said. I could feel the warmth of the southern sun on my skin, and know the people I gave so much of my life to save. "What happened before I came to you … it won't happen again, I'm sure of it."

Bran looked away, his eyes distant for a moment. "You will go beyond the places where I have power," he warned. "I would go with you if I could, but the time for that has passed. I cannot leave the trees." He reached into a fold of his clothes and produced a small polished wooden box. "But I can send you aid. Take this," he passed the box to Jon. "Inside you will find the seed of a weirwood tree. Take it with you, keep it secret and safe. The Godswoods of the south have lost their heart trees. If you plant that and it grows, in time I may be able to reach you if you need me."

Jon nodded. He reached out to engulf Bran in a hug. The younger boy put his arms around Jon's shoulders and they rested their heads together. "Thank you, Bran," Jon said finally. "Thank you for everything."

Bran did not move. "We are still brothers, aren't we? Even if you are a Targaryen now?"

"Yes," Jon said. "You are my brother forever. All of you, the Starks, are my brothers and sisters."

"Then you don't need to thank me," Bran said. "This is what brothers do for each other."

Jon looked behind Bran, and saw Leaf standing under the weirwood, with a bag in her hands. Jon's bag, holding everything he had brought with him to this place. He looked at his brother, realizing that Bran had always known that he would be leaving.

Bran smiled, the corner of his eyes crinkling. "Good luck, Jon. We will meet again." The wind blew, and the shadow of the weirwood shifted, and Bran was gone. Only Summer was left in the clearing. The direwolf looked at Jon with huge dark eyes, then trotted to Leaf. Together, they vanished into the trees.

Ghost pressed into Jon's side and whined. Jon rubbed his head. "Sorry, old friend," he told his direwolf. "I have to go on ahead of you. Come and find me if you can." With that, he looked into the sky and called to the dragon.

The time had come for him to fly.


	13. Chapter 13

The glass gardens of Winterfell had sustained its people through a hundred winters, but their wonder had been the bounty they produced. Rebuilt, they were so beautiful that even in his urgency, Jon was stunned by their beauty. A thousand rainbows of light and colour struck his eyes as he stepped through the inner doors, filtered through layers of glass that trapped the heat and was angled to slough off the winter snows. They had planned this together, he and Sansa, in the first days of spring, before the grey hopelessness had overwhelmed him. The idea of bringing glassmakers from Myr to train apprentices had been his, Sansa had found the coin, and together they had drawn up the plans. Now, for the first time, he truly saw what had come from their vision. There was a moment when he looked at the riot of colours through tears, before he blinked them back, glad that there was no one to see.

Winterfell's familiar outline on the horizon had been a welcome sight. Bran's cave was further north than his usual patrol sweeps, and what maps existed from previous rangings had not been written with navigation from the air in mind. Viserion's need to hunt had further delayed them. Even after Castle Black, when he could follow the Kingsroad, his progress had been slowed by rain and mist that sometimes limited visibility to only a few dragon lengths. He had hoped to make the flight to Winterfell in a few days, but near a fortnight had passed before he reached the castle.

The people of Winterfell were used to Jon, and knew not to crowd him, although he had seen the children gather on the walls to gawk at the dragon. Viserion, for his part, had proceeded directly to the largest of the hot pools (causing the bathers to scatter) and submerged himself so that only his eyes and nostrils poked out. His mind radiated blissful contentment. Although the prospect of joining the dragon had been tempting after the long flight, Jon had asked for Rickon, and been directed to the glass gardens.

He turned the corner, looked, and dove back the way he had come, cringing and covering his eyes. "Damnit Rickon," he muttered under his breath. From the sounds, neither Rickon nor his companion had been aware of the intrusion. A few minutes exploration provided Jon with a bucket of cold water that appeared to have been intended for the rose bushes. Moving quietly, Jon came up behind the couple and dumped the contents unceremoniously over Rickon's back.

Rickon scrambled to his feet, cursing as the girl's shriek of laughter rang through the glass garden. Jon didn't let Rickon straighten up before his arm was around the younger boy's neck. Rickon stilled instantly at the feeling of sharp steel between his legs. "If I was an enemy," Jon told him grimly. "I could end your line right here and now." He waited a moment to let the words sink in, then moved his knife to tap the flat of the blade against Rickon's scrotum.

Rickon stood very still. "Jon? What … what are you doing here?"

Jon removed his knife and pushed Rickon so that he went sprawling onto the floor. "Right this moment, wishing I was blind. Put your pants on." He carefully focused his gaze at Rickon, scrambling for his clothes, and not at the girl. "Lyanna," he greeted her.

"Your highness," Lyanna smoothly returned Jon's greeting, sitting up and pulling her dress on in a graceful motion. She gave Jon a cat-like smile, which deepened at his blush. At sixteen, Lyanna had grown into a cool elegance. She reminded Jon of her older sister Dacey who had died with Robb at the Red Wedding. She was dark haired and pretty (although nobody looked their best from the angle Jon has just seen). He recalled that she was named for his mother, although as soon as Jon had the thought, he wished he hadn't.

"The hell, Jon!" Rickon spat, once he had his pants on. "You crazy—"

"What were you thinking?" Jon demanded, not in the mood for an argument. He wondered if he had seemed so rash at fourteen. "You are not without enemies, even within the walls of Winterfell. I don't want to catch you letting your guard down in public for any reason, let alone fucking in the glass gardens."

"Yeah, well, I don't think that is going to be a problem," Rickon said with a glare, putting his hand protectively over his crotch. "Since I may never get it up AGAIN," he added. "Are you just here to end any possibility of the male Stark line continuing, or is there some reason the visit?"

"We need to talk. I'll wait for you in your solar, Rickon." He flicked his dagger into the ground. "And you can wash my knife."

* * *

Only Rickon, Jon reflected, would accept that someone had vanished into the wilderness for six moons without batting an eye or asking for an explanation. Lyanna seemed more curious, but when Jon failed to elaborate, she let the matter drop. Sam had been less reticent when Jon had stopped at Castle Black on his way south. Jon had told Sam everything: his time at the cave, and what had happened in the woods to bring him there. It had not been easy, and he was grateful that he did not have to repeat the experience at Winterfell.

He had hoped that Sam would be able to assuage his fears about Sansa. Instead, Sam had provided him with two letters Sansa had sent from King's Landing, and a copy of his own response. Jon quietly cursed as he read the first, detailing the loss of the Queen's child and Jon's continuing (and unwelcome) status as heir to the throne. He wished, not for the first time, that he had protested legitimization more forcefully. He opened the second letter, saw the word "Harrenhal" and felt his heart sink. He had restrained himself from taking to the air like he was launched from a catapult, and had only turned south after assuring himself that Lord Commander Mormont had the rebuilding well in hand and after leaving instructions for Sam to send any more letters south.

There was no way to know if Sansa had received Sam's suggestion that she leave court. Jon had sent his own reply immediately, but knew he could not depend on her receiving it in a timely fashion. No ravens made the trip from the Wall to the south directly. The distances were too great for any one bird. Letters were passed from one castle to another, and routes depended on the availability of trained birds. Sometimes messages would travel by horse or ship. At best, the letter might make it in a fortnight, faster than a dragon could fly. At worst, it could be moons.

Jon minimized his fears as he explained the problem to Rickon and Lyanna, and that he would be travelling south to try to figure out what had occurred. He was reassured that Rickon appeared to be managing well, that Edmure Tully would be visiting to advise the young lord, and that Lyanna appeared steady and sensible. For all her apparent wildness, he knew that she had ruled Bear Island during the War when she was no more than a spirited child. The years had steadied her, although they had not diminished her fierce, and now personal, loyalty to the Starks.

Even now, she had silently produced a map of the Trident region for them to examine, and consider where Sansa could most likely be found. "If there is nothing wrong, then you will find her with the court," Lyanna said. "But if there is danger, and she takes Sam's advice to leave," she added, her finger hovering above Harrenhal, "Where would she go? The North is too far."

Rickon shrugged. "Riverrun. That's maybe five days ride away, on easy roads, or ten days on the backroads. The North is too far – that journey would take months. If not Riverrun, then the Vale. The Eyrie is secure, and she knows the Vale well, but she would have to travel over the High road to get there."

"Riverrun is the most obvious place," Jon agreed. "Maybe too obvious. If the trouble was serious enough for her to leave court, then Riverrun would be the first place an enemy would look for her. I will start at the Eyrie. If she's not there, then Robert Arryn may have news."

"Do you truly think there is trouble?" Rickon asked with a worried frown. "She sounded content enough in her letters to me – she spoke well of the King. Surely if there is danger she would be protected at court."

At Jon's request, Rickon produced Sansa's letters. They read like the correspondence of a woman writing to an unruly child. Sansa spoke of little of political importance, and less of personal interest. The King and Queen had been welcoming and gracious, Tyrion was witty, Podrick had killed a shadowcat and given Sansa the skin. There was no mention of conflict with the Martells or violence in the throneroom. From her letters to Rickon, Jon would have thought the court an endless parade of funny stories and pageantry. The last had been sent on the road to Harrenhal.

He had a feeling of unease holding the packet of letters, which told a sweet lie to a boy Sansa had seen as an unruly child, and wondered what other lies she might have told, what secrets she might have kept. She sees Rickon as a child, he thought. She and I thought of each other the same way. What do her letters to me fail to say?

* * *

Jon had to let Viserion rest for several days and regain his strength before continuing south. The time gave Jon the opportunity to sign documents giving Rickon some proxy powers, and giving others to Lyanna's sister Alysane Mormont to exercise until Arya returned. On review, he found the account books of Winterfell in good order, the castle well-staffed, and the bannermen as content as could be expected. He agreed with Rickon's concerns about the encroachment of the Ironborn on the west coast, and made some suggestions for a mutual defence strategy with Edmure Tully. Jon also sent a pointed personal message addressed to Theon, but intended for Asha as the true power on the islands, suggesting that they would not like the consequences if they continued to allow raids.

That done, he occupied himself with acquiring supplies and maps for the flight to the Eyrie. It was sobering to realize that he had never been further south than a couple of days' ride from Winterfell. That trip had been a hunting expedition with Robb and Theon, accompanied by several Stark men. He remembered how mature they had felt as they chose the campsites each night and how proud they had been riding back with their packhorses loaded with game. Jon had just turned fourteen, and half a year later he had been on his way to the Wall.

Spring had come, and he had twenty namedays, the next time he had seen Winterfell. Even after the defeat of the Others, Winter had continued to rage for years. The survivors at the Wall had battled starvation and laboured to keep the life-saving roads from Eastwatch open for supplies. Jon had managed to get some of them home over icy roads but for others, like Daenerys' troops and the Wildlings, there were no homes to go to. Some were so badly wounded that all that could be done was to try to keep them warm and comfortable.

When the first days of Spring had come, it had felt like the world was coming alive again. Food had still been desperately short, but there were returning birds to hunt and greens coming through the melting snow, and as hungry mouths vanished south or returned to abandoned villages, Jon had begun to think about the possibility of a future away from the Wall. He had imagined he could take Viserion to Dragonstone to see the ancient fortress of the Targaryens under the smoking mountain, where both their ancestors had ruled. He had even dreamed of visiting Essos to see the cities Dany had ruled half way around the world, although he had known he'd never dare to take his dragon so far from the Wall. Even in those first days of Spring, in the back of his mind had been the fear, and the whisper of 'not again.'

It had been nearly four years since that first visit to Winterfell, which had started out so hopefully. For the first few days he had loved to simply roam around the castle, seeing the familiar places of his boyhood, praying before the heart tree in the Godswood. He and Sansa and Arya had planned the rebuilding together, dreaming of a Winterfell as strong as the old castle and as beautiful as dreams could make it. But as the days turned into weeks he had found it more and more difficult to live by the rhythms of life in the Stark stronghold. He found himself waking in a sweat from dreams, and startling at sudden noises. He had concealed his growing anxiety from the others, not wishing to distress them and hoping that it would fade in time. Perhaps it would have, he thought, but two months into his visit a message had come from the Wall. Wildlings returning to abandoned villages had seen the walking dead.

The alarm had proven false: the man was more than a little mad. Still, Jon had spent months scouring the forests. He had not wanted to admit to himself that he had felt a rush of relief when he returned to Castle Black, and had felt he was home. He had roamed the castle in the dark, unable to sleep, and he had met other men with their own demons that came in the dark. Jon could not trust these once-brothers, but he found himself counselling the mentally wounded just as he had once watched over the physically helpless. He spent long nights silently listening to tales of the battles, of comrades lost, of the guilt and shame of the survivors. Sometimes the tales had seemed more real than the life he was living.

He had felt a purpose then, as he patrolled the north, and cared for the survivors of the war, as he signed documents and arranged for his incomes as a prince to care for orphans and widows in the south. He had believed he was doing his duty. When, he wondered, had the darkness began to close over him? When had he begun to mistake his nightmares for reality?

A soft knock on the door startled him, and he touched the hilt of his (washed) dagger before he looked up. A dark haired young woman peered around his door frame, her brow creased. Although she had once been pretty, her nose was disfigured and her cheeks scarred by frostbite. "Jeyne," he said.

Jeyne Poole hovered in the doorway, her hands twisting in her skirt. "Your highness, if I might have a word?"

"We grew up together, Jeyne. Please, call me Jon."

"Oh no. I could never do that," she said, and Jon thought briefly about how she had once smirked at him for his bastard birth. He sighed. The Jeyne Poole who had returned to Winterfell after the war cowered and parsed every word. "Your highness, Lord Rickon asked me to speak to you about Lady Sansa. He said you were asking where she might have gone if she was in trouble." She paused and bit her lip. "There is one place I could think of … but …"

"Yes, Jeyne?" Jon said, using the reassuring voice he had practiced with so many of the men he had fought with at the Wall, men who could snap at a loud sound or a sudden movement. "Tell me what you know."

"If Lady Sansa was in real trouble, then she would go to family first." She gestured helplessly, and Jon thought that Jeyne knew plenty about being in danger and having no one to go to. "But I did think of one other possibility. She could go south into the Stormlands, to Tarth. Brienne, the Lady of Tarth, was sworn to Catelyn Stark's service before her death, and she went on a quest to find Sansa and bring her to safety. Sansa barely knows Brienne, but it might be a haven where few would think to look for her."

"Thank you, Jeyne," Jon said gently. "Was there anything else in Sansa's letters to you that I might need to know about?"

"She didn't say much about danger, but she wouldn't." Jeyne said. "Lady Sansa rarely speaks to anyone about her worries. But … I know why the Martells were upset with her. It seems … well … she was rather taken with King Aegon." Briefly, Jeyne explained what had happened between Sansa and Aegon when the royal birth had gone wrong.

Jon put his face in his hand. "Oh hell, Sansa," was all he could think to say.

"She was mortified," Jeyne offered hesitantly. "I know it sounds foolish to you, but … she's been lonely, these years. She says he is very handsome," she flushed, "and he sounds romantic from her descriptions. The southern Septons say that women shouldn't have needs or desires for men … but … it is no easy thing to live alone."

Jon nodded silently, embarrassed. He had come to know Jeyne well during the last months of the war. She had nursed the worst of the wounded at Castle Black. If she had found a purpose in work, first at the Wall, and then at Winterfell when she had unofficially taken over many of the duties of the steward, she had never regained the spirit of her youth. Her marriage to the loathed Ramsey Bolton and her disfigured face had scared off any suitors that might have looked past her lack of a dowry, but she had two base-born sons growing up at Winterfell, their paternity unknown. Jon hoped that they were a comfort to her. Of all the persons who had suffered in the war, he thought, Jeyne's fate had been among the cruellest.

After speaking with Jeyne, and saying farewell to Rickon, Jon saddled Viserion. He took a last look at Winterfell, the home of his youth. The walls had changed little, and, although some of the buildings were still surrounded with scaffolding, they had the familiar lines he remembered from his childhood. Only the people were different. For a moment he imagined that he could see a younger self sparring with Robb under the watchful eye of Rodrick Cassel, and Bran scaling the stone walls like a squirrel. There were other boys playing in the yard now. As he took to the air, they ran to watch him, and he waved goodbye to them, feeling for a moment like he was waving to the boys of his memories.

* * *

Songs and stories had told of the beauty of the Vale, but as Viserion cleared the mountains and the green land was laid out before them, Jon found his breath almost taken away. Rivers shone like silver in the sunlight and the green meadows they wound through were scattered with sheep like tiny clouds. The great mountain called the Giant's Lance loomed above the valley, its slopes covered in snow. The pale stone of the castle called the Eyrie gleamed on a ridge of the mountain slopes.

He guided Viserion to circle the castle, but could not identify a place he felt comfortable landing, and dismounting. Finally, he found a stony ledge behind the castle, and brought the dragon in there. As soon as he dismounted and was clear of Viserion's heat, Jon felt the damp cold seeping through his riding leathers, and he looked ruefully at the rocky slope above him. It was going to be a long, cold climb.

An hour later, Jon was shown to a room with a crackling fire and a glass window looking over the Vale to wait for Robert Arryn. The heat was painful on his frozen fingers but he held them close to the fire until they were warm again. A servant brought him a cup of red wine and a bowl of hot soup with beef and barley and thick chunks of carrots, accompanied by crusty bread so hot that it burned his fingers and fine yellow butter that melted the instant it touched the bread. He devoured it hungrily, using the last of the bread to mop up the soup. Then he closed his eyes to doze.

After half an hour, as he was wondering if it would be good manners to ask for more soup, the thought began to surface in Jon's mind that he was a prince of the realm. Surely this was not the sort of welcome that should be expected? Regretfully, he began to suspect that the soup he had just consumed was a slight. Although he was tempted to ask for more of the 'insult soup' and wait his host out, he did not want to lose time. He sighed, pulled himself to his feet, and went in search of Robert Arryn.

He eventually located the young Lord of the Vale on the parapets. Robert was seated on a stool, carefully tying a lure on the end of a line. A falconer stood nearby holding a fine blue-grey goshawk. Jon approached silently, and waited. Robert continued to work on the lure. "Are you busy?" Jon asked.

"My hawk needs to be exercised. After this, I have dispatches to read. Perhaps later I will hold court. A Lord Paramount has many responsibilities." Robert looked meaningfully up at Jon. "I, myself, chose not to shirk them." He stood, and gestured for the falconer to release the bird. Then he swung the lure on the line in a circle so that the bird could chase it. Jon stepped back as the bloody meat passed his head, followed closely by the excited hawk.

Jon ducked backwards to avoid the flapping wings. "Do you have a problem with me, Lord Arryn?" he asked. The lure and bird came around again, and Jon backed up another step.

"I do not have a problem with you. I could not care less if you jump out the moon door." The lure came around again. "I told Sansa not to go to King's Landing. I said that she could live here if you threw her out of her home for refusing your orders."

Jon stared at Robert Arryn. Had he said that? He thought back to the fight on top of the Wall, and a nasty, cold feeling crept into the pit of his stomach. Sansa had not thought he was serious? "That's why I am here," he said carefully. "I'm looking for Sansa."

Robert stared at him, and dropped the lure. The hawk shrieked and jumped on the meat. "You don't know where she is?" he yelled. "You useless sack of crap!"

What followed was the most astonishing and humbling five minutes of Jon's life. Robert started with name calling, moved on to a lecture about the duties of a chivalric nobleman to protect the women in his family, went back to name calling, harangued Jon about neglecting the duties that birth and position had placed on him, and finished with a graphic description of exactly why Sansa had been afraid to go to court after everything that had happened the first time she had been there, most of which Jon was hearing for the first time. By the end of the lecture, Jon had been backed all the way down the parapet until his back was against a wall.

It was a shock, receiving a scolding from a boy who had been, famously, breastfed until he was eight years old. Worse was the realization that Robert was entirely in the right. Jon had nothing to come back with.

Finally, Robert ran out of invectives, and stood silently, glaring. Jon took that as an indication that he might ask a question. "I know I need to set things right," he said cautiously. "Do you know where Sansa might be?"

"If she was in trouble she would come to me," Robert said simply, his anger banked. "I would shelter her here against anything. If she couldn't get here, then she would send word and I would go to her." There was no doubt or hesitation in his voice.

"But you have heard nothing?"

"No." His eyes were dark with worry.

Suddenly Jon saw Viserion, laying below on the ledge, start to flap his wings, and a huffing noise emerged from the throat of the beast. It was looking skyward. "What is it, boy?" Jon called. He received only a sensation of excitement. He looked up, but all he could see were heavy grey clouds, their base only a few hundred feet above the castle. Then Viserion roared, and a green blur dropped down through the clouds, and spread bronze and green wings to circle over the Eyrie. Rhaegal looked lazily down at the castle. A figure on his back gestured, and the dragon folded his wings and dropped until he hovered over the Eyrie's central courtyard. The rider unfastened his straps in mid-air, jumped, and rolled gracefully as he hit the ground. Jon straightened, and prepared to greet his brother.

A/N: For the purposes of this story, I have assumed that Lyanna Mormont was younger in than Jon thought when she wrote her letter to Stannis in a Dance with Dragons. She is about two years older than Rickon.

The material later in the chapter is heavily inspired by some of the comments I have received which are critical of Jon. I figured that at least one character should really let Jon have it about everything he has neglected, particularly since Westeros has very little concept of PTSD or mental health problems.

Thanks so much for all the comments and encouragement!


	14. Chapter 14

Aegon stood in the courtyard, making no move, waiting. Jon approached him, and bowed, taking the man's measure as he did so. Aegon was a bit taller than Jon, and a bit heavier, but had a similar build. Jon suspected he would be quick in a fight, and his steadiness under spoke of self-control and confidence that might make him dangerous. Then he caught himself. This is my brother, he reminded himself. And my king. I am not here to fight him. Jon opened his mouth to offer greetings.

"Shit!" he said instead, as hundreds of pounds of hot scale-covered flesh and bone collided in the air above their heads. Visarion and Rhaegal were roaring and twisting their necks around each other as they dropped into the courtyard. Spectators had assembled to watch the arrival of the king and the reunion of the brothers; they scattered like mice as the dragons came to ground together. Screams filled the air. Jon saw a chicken coup shatter under a green claw and the number of winged creatures creating chaos quadrupled. His eyes met Aegon's shocked gaze. The brothers looked at each other in dismay, then together they ran for their dragons.

Neither of their shouts had much effect on the beasts. Jon cursed again, prolifically. Visarion's mind was filled with excitement and happiness at the reunion, although he was fiercely determined to show Rhaegal that he was the stronger dragon. Jon's attempt at diverting him bounced off the surface of the dragon's mind with little more effect than his verbal calls.

"Everyone inside," Aegon yelled, and the few people still in outside vanished. "Damnit," he said more quietly to Jon. "They are going to crush everything in this courtyard."

Together they looked around. The Eyrie was a small castle surrounded by steep cliffs. The courtyard was obviously the main outdoor space for the inhabitants. The sound of bleating from an archway suggested that the goats and sheep had taken refuge indoors along with the humans, but the space was filled with pens and feed, small gardens in trenchers and piles of vegetables. Together they watched Rhaegal stagger backwards into a line hung with clothes, and emerge with a rope and a bright orange tunic wrapped around one leg. He turned away from Visarion to snap at it. Faces looked down at them from the parapets, from windows, from archways.

"Well," Aegon said, a wry tone to his voice. "This is embarrassing. If we mess up here, our reputations as Dragonlords are not going to do the Conquerors and his sisters proud."

Taken by surprise, Jon found himself laughing with Aegon. "I think our legends will survive a broken chicken coup." Jon winced as Visarion snapped a chicken out of mid-air. "We may have to pay for a few chickens."

Aegon grinned, and Jon thought of Robb, of how they had played together, learned to fight together, loved each other and competed in all things. Robb had been his opposite – bright where Jon was dark, strong and tall where Jon was wiry and graceful, joyful when Jon was brooding and bitter. He had known Aegon, in truth, only these few minutes, but it was a shock to look at this man, this stranger who was his brother, and to see for the first time, a thousand mannerisms, gestures, patterns of thought that were his own; all the things that had made him an outsider among the Starks were reflected back at him. How is a stranger who is no more me than the blood more myself than the family I grew up with, Jon wondered.

"Rhaegal's in harness," Aegon said. "I'm going to try to get on his back."

"You're mad," Jon told him. The two dragons were both flapping their wings, almost filling the small space. "They'll calm down, and we can make our apologies. If they are really mad, well, the soup is good."

Aegon looked quizzically at Jon. Before he could say anything, one of the dragons knocked over a pile of hay bales, and everything changed. Four children, the oldest looking no more than seven, had been huddled together behind the makeshift shelter. They must have been too terrified to run, or even to scream or cry, thought Jon. The youngest was a boy wearing a shirt but no pants. He looked no more than three. Jon thought of Rickon as he had been before Jon rode north, of Bran when he was a child following at Jon's heels. But he didn't remember either of them looking as terrified as this boy as he clung to a girl little older than himself. Aegon cursed, and moved as if to go for Rhaegal.

Jon slammed an arm into his chest. "Just keep them away from the children!"

Aegon frowned, looking like he wanted to argue. Jon suspected that nobody had given his brother an order since he had come to Westeros. Then Aegon looked at the dragons, and at the terrified children. "Do what you can to fix this," he told Jon. He moved forward, placing himself between the children and the dragons. Visarion hissed at Aegon and Rhaegal raised his spinal crest and roared. While the dragons were distracted, Jon ducked into an open archway. Several people stared back at him – an old man, a girl with her arm around a goat, two men-at-arms, a Knight of the Vale with a richly embroidered surcoat. There was nowhere to sit, so he slid down against the wall and closed his eyes.

The colours were different through the dragon's eyes. That was always the first shock. He could see a thousand shades of red and orange, blues that shimmered in the light. Strangest of all, he could see heat a deep red bloom and cold as grey and black. Rhaegal was the brightest thing in this space of dim cold stone, but he could see the smaller figure standing beside the dragon.

In the back, Visarion knew what Jon had done and he raged and struggled for domination before stilling into resentful silence. When Jon had achieved control, he spread his wings and gathered himself for a leap into the air. The Eyrie fell away behind him. Rhaegal took wing after him, and they flew together, the sun on their wings, revelling in their strength.

Mountain goats were jumping down a rocky slope on the other side of the waterfall called Alyssa's Tears. Jon stretched his claws, folded his wings, and fell upon the largest. The hot red blood ran down his throat as he tore at the beast's flesh. Rhaegal was there, and that was good because he was no longer alone, but it was bad because he was a threat to Jon's kill. Dragons hunted alone. Jon roared warning to his brother and bit his teeth deep into his kill.

* * *

Jon returned to his body to find himself nestled into a deep chair. While he had been in the dragon's body, someone had walked him inside. For the sake of his dignity, he hoped he had not been carried. Jon opened his eyes and blinked hard. Slowly he became aware that he was being scrutinized from nearby.

"Your legend has not suffered from today's work," Aegon said. "The people of the Eyrie will be talking about this for years to come." His violet eyes were shadowed.

Jon looked around, checking the room for threats. He was in a chamber much grander than the one he had been initially shown to. Tapestries showing tales of the Winged Knight adorned the walls, and the furniture was upholstered in rich fabrics of cream and sky-blue. Jon and Aegon were in comfortable chairs by the fire. Robert Arryn was sitting in a window seat, at some remove from the two brothers, bundled up into himself and watching the two brothers intensely. Jon thought the boy looked more than half falcon himself. Then he wondered at the thought. The boy is just a boy. Do I think that the boy looks like a falcon because I know him an Arryn, or has a lifetime of being called a falcon made him think of himself as one?

"What are you doing here?" Jon asked Aegon, as he attempted to struggle upright. The soft cushions must have been stuffed with finest down. Whenever he thought he had a secure hold it melted away on him, and the fine silk coverings offered no purchase. Belatedly, he realized that his tone was less respectful than perhaps it should be. "Your grace," he tacked on.

Aegon blinked slowly, indicating that he had noticed the belated honorific but chose not to make an issue of it. "I might ask you the same thing, brother. After receiving your raven that you were coming south, I took Rhaegal and came to meet you. We hunt in these mountains often." He smiled and leaned forward. "Sansa is fine, Jon. I saw her two days ago at King's Landing. Not a scratch on her."

Jon closed his eyes as a wave of relief swept over him. He looked like a bit of a fool, he knew, rushing south on a bad dream and an worrying letter, but he didn't care. She was fine. This had all been one of his paranoid fantasies, no truth in it at all. Sansa was safe and well, and there was still time to pick up the pieces of the duty he had made such a mess of.

"Although …" Aegon hesitated, and Jon's eyes snapped open. "A lot has happened in the past moon."

He felt his stomach drop. "Tell me."

"I blame myself entirely. I knew that Sansa was shaken when there was violence in my throne room. We all were - but I never thought she was truly in fear for her own safety. Sansa … Sansa is good at what she does. All my councillors are good and I expect a great deal of them. Perhaps too much." Aegon shook his head. "Be that as it may. I understand that your Maester wrote to her and suggested she leave?"

Jon nodded. He found himself flexing and stretching his right hand, a habit he had developed when he feared that the burns would compromise his ability to handle a sword. The scars had been lost after his resurrection left the flesh as smooth and supple as if it had never been burned. Strange, he thought. I haven't caught myself doing that in years.

Aegon sighed. "Well, she did. Leave, that is. In the dead of the night, she and her captain of the guard snuck out through a water gate that had not been used in decades. The man had befriended one of the maids who was born in the castle, and she showed them where to go."

"Your grace, with respect," Robert Arryn interjected. He gave Jon a sly sidelone look, and a smirk, as if to make sure Jon noticed the address. "Could my cousin not simply have ridden out openly with a proper escort?"

"In truth, I would have stopped her," Aegon said. "Sansa is on my Small Council, and she is privy to sensitive information about the realm. With all the tension, I would have objected to her leaving court." He ran a hand through his hair. "But when she vanished in the night without an explanation, and nobody could determine how she had even left the castle, I assumed the worst. It seemed impossible that a woman like Sansa would have left of her own free will to ride through the woods almost alone. I doubt she had ever even slept out of doors. Edmure Tully and I sent ravens to all the Riverlands lords saying she was believed to have been abducted by her captain of the guards and persons unknown."

Jon began to get a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"They made it surprisingly far given that neither of them knew the paths or had much woodcraft. It was pure luck that Lord Ashby's hunting party encountered them just north of High Heart. He had seen Sansa at a Riverrun tourney where she was crowned the Queen of Love and Beauty and he recognized her instantly. He took her into his custody and brought her back to Harrenhal." Aegon looked uncomfortable, and more than a little angry. "But they had hung her guardsman on the spot."

Jon flinched. He remembered the man – Joram the Bear he had been called – from when he was in Stannis' service. Sansa had been attached to him, Jon knew. He dimly recalled Rickon saying that when she met the man she had taken to him immediately and refused to even consider candidates with superior blood and training.

"Lord Ashby said it was because of the raven about the abduction, but my men questioned his huntsman, and they said it was because …. Well, Sansa had some bruises and they thought that the man had taken liberties."

Jon froze, feeling sick to the pit of his stomach, and Robert Arryn gasped.

"She swears nothing happened. I am inclined to believe her, but who is to know? The man called himself a Northerner, but he was Ironborn and he had been a sellsword in Essos before the War. In any event, Sansa was distraught when she was brought back to Harrenhal. Edmure wanted to take her to Winterfell, but she insists on staying with Tyrion – he's been ill. The maesters say there is nothing wrong with her, but she doesn't sleep and she barely eats." Aegon glared at Jon. "Your maester doubtless meant well." Aegon said. His tone was clipped. "But he should have minded his own affairs."

"Perhaps," Jon said, "you should make sure your councillors are not afraid for their lives while at your court." Jon thought of Sansa in the woods, alone with a man of questionable reputation. What had she been thinking, he wondered. Then he thought of what Robert had told him, of all she had suffered as a child hostage of the Lannisters. It barely seemed comprehensible to him. Delicate, defensless Sansa. Who could ever want to hurt her? But it explained so much.

They had talked about their time in the war, all the Starks. Rickon had tales of Skagos, of unicorns and hunts, but also of cold and hunger and fear of the Others. Arya had spoken of her travels with the Night's Watch, her blacksmith, the Hound, even sometimes of Braavos, although Jon knew he had heard only a part of that story. Jon had kept much of the worst of his time in the war from the younger Starks, but they knew some of it from songs. Still, he had shared tales of Val and Tormund Giantsbane, of sparring with Wildlings and riding with Giants. Sansa had told her tales too – of a decadent and corrupt court, of her own foolishness for being infatuated with a Prince she now agreed was 'a little shit.' There had been no talk of beatings, or brandished crossbows, or being stripped and mocked before the court.

Jon shook his head, and looked at Aegon. "There is something you are not telling us. Your grace. Why would Sansa have been so afraid that she fled into the night? Who would she have reason to be fear?"

Aegon blew out a long breath. "The list is longer than you might think. When we found she was missing, I first suspected Martyn Lannister. In truth, I expected to find a fresh grave in the woods. Sansa is Tyrion's wife and in her prime childbearing years. If she were to produce an heir, Martyn stands to lose Casterly Rock. Then there are the Martells. I assume that you know that there is talk that I should put Arianne aside, and that if I were to wed again … well some have whispered that Sansa was almost Queen once and that she might now seek a crown for her sister, or even for herself if her marriage could be annulled."

"I know that you have done plenty to fuel those rumours," Jon said.

Aegon shifted under Jon's glare. "I like Sansa," he said defensively. "I think that perhaps she likes me, too, although she is not the easiest woman to read. That said, I behaved poorly during Arianne's childbirth, I admit it. The Martells are sensitive about Stark women, after what happened between our father and your mother. My kin can be hot blooded. But beyond that …" his voice trailed off, he took a deep breath. "I myself may have had a part in her taking fright at Harrenhal. We had acrimonious words not long before she left – I was unhappy about some of the trade agreements she had negotiated for the north and I confronted her. I also questioned her about some recent events at the Twins. Does the name Alayne Stone mean anything to you?"

Jon shook his head, mystified, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Robert Arryn stiffen.

"Two years ago the bridge at the twins was damaged in a flood."

"I am aware. The north has been bringing goods by ship, into White Harbour and Barrowton. We had to divert labour from Winterfell and the Wall to shore up the roads." "Why are we talking about this?"

"A few months ago, the Freys discovered that the mortar they had been using to reconstruct the bridge had been tampered with." Jon noticed that Robert Arryn suddenly seemed to find something fascinating in the designs of the carpet. Aegon was looking, too, and his lips quirked into a smile. "They were forced to tear down half a years' worth of work. The Frey's tribulations struck me as odd. I had my Master of Whispers and Master of Coin look into it, and they traced rather large payments to a Frey craftsman made by an Alayne Stone."

Robert Arryn was now mesmerised by whatever he could see on the floor. Aegon gave him a cool look. "I need the support of the Vale, so I am not going to ask where the coin for that payment came from. But once we found that, we started looking deeper. Alayne Stone has some very unsavoury connections, including some of King's Landings more popular brothels."

"Again, this is all very interesting, but why are we talking about this?"

Aegon looked at Robert. "Tell him."

"Alayne Stone is Sansa," Robert said reluctantly. "That is the name she used when she lived here during the war." His face set defiantly. "And the Freys deserved to have their bridge fall down. They killed my aunt and my cousin. I hate them."

Jon realized that his mouth was hanging open. He tried to wrap his mind around the concept of Sansa and brothels being linked in any way and failed. Until today, he would not have thought that Sansa even knew what a brothel was. He closed his mouth. "You told me off for not protecting Sansa from danger, and the two of you have been knocking down bridges together?"

"Calm down, Jon. Everyone is corrupt in King's Landing," Aegon said. "Sansa's problem is that she was more effective at it than most. Still, she's had a terrible shock. For her sake, I would be grateful if you could make plans to stay at court for a time."

Jon had come south with the plan of going to King's Landing, of seeing Sansa, and there was not an instant when he intended differently. If Aegon had suggested Jon not go, in his present mood Jon likely would have struck him. Yet, hearing his brother – his King, say the words, suddenly made it all real for Jon. Going to King's Landing. He had known more than his share of Kings, long before he had met this stranger-brother before him. Ned Stark had been a king in all but title, ruling a north that cared nothing for lords outside its borders. Jon remembered him wielding Ice with his own hands to dispense justice, hearing the words of his lesser bannermen patiently. As a man grown, Jon could look back and see that his disappointment with Robert Baratheon, fat, jolly, impulsive, Robert, who would had killed Jon in a heartbeat if he had known who the boy was, had their foundations in the expectations set by Ned Stark.

Then he had gone to the Wall, never to see the man he had called father again. He had met other kings there, though. Mance Raydar, who had no claim on the title except ability, who had knit together a disparate people facing annihilation, and had lead them to the brink of safety, only to be defeated by Stannis Baratheon, another King with less charisma, but an equal sense of duty to his people. He thought of what Jeor Mormont had said to him when Robb was named a king, when he had reminded Jon of the glories and riches his brother would know. Tell me you are not troubled, the Lord Commander had said, and I'll call you a liar. What will you do? Jeor had asked. "Be troubled," Jon had answered, brash and safe in the carelessness of his youth, "and keep my vows." That had seemed so simple at fourteen. But what shall I do now, he wondered, when I no longer have my vows to guide me?

Jon felt so utterly unprepared for the court of his brother. How can I help Sansa, he wondered. What do I know of her life in King's Landing? He very much doubted that dealing with Selyse Florent Baratheon, the only southern noblewoman Jon had ever truly known, would be much assistance. He hoped not.

There was a moment then, when he looked over the shoulder of the brother he didn't know, that he thought of a girl with crooked teeth and hair kissed by fire. What he had felt for Ygritte had not been the all-consuming passion that he had felt for Daenerys, but he had cared for her, had fought beside her and against her, and she had forced him to question everything he thought he had known. Even after he lost her, Ygritte had walked with him in some of his darkest days. Now he thought of the words she had said to him so often. "You know nothing." If he had been alone he would have smiled back at her ghost. I know nothing, but I can learn, I can see, I can help those who need me. Oh Ygritte, he thought, and loved and grieved. I know nothing, and those words taught me to see.

* * *

The inhabitants of the Eyrie were treating the visitors as not officially here, Jon was told, to avoid the need for formal receptions and honours. Given that both of them had arrived on dragon-back, Jon thought that was a thin bit of deception, but he had no interest in ceremony and a great interest in the promised bed so he was happy to play along. Before retiring, Jon and Aegon agreed to set out at first light for King's Landing.

"I did have one question Aegon," Jon said. His brother raised an eyebrow. "You spent, what, two days flying north to the Eyrie?" Aegon paused, then nodded. His eyes were fixed on Jon. "Quite a coincidence that you arrived less than an hour after I did. But then, a dragonrider who knew these mountains could find a good vantage point and wait until he saw us coming into the Vale."

"So he could," Aegon agreed affably. "On the Giant's Lance, say."

"What would that dragonrider gain by arriving after me, I wonder." Aegon was silent, so Jon answered his own question. "Only the chance to speak to Robert Arryn and I together, and gauge our reactions. Robert isn't a very good liar."

"Neither are you," Aegon said. "You don't get too much practice, with that Stark honour of yours." He shifted. "I learned that Robert Arryn was in on Sansa's schemes, and that you weren't. That is something worth knowing."

"You don't trust me."

"I don't trust anyone. From the time I was at my mother's breast, people have wanted me dead. I am still alive. I have sat the Iron Throne for seven years. I am still alive." He spread his hands. "Do you know that the Throne of Swords has never cut me? The trick is to remain still. Easier said than done. No, brother, I don't trust you. You should get some sleep. We have a long flight tomorrow."

Aegon turned away to go into his chambers. "It doesn't work, you know," Jon said to Aegon's back. His brother didn't look. "Not trusting anyone," he continued into the silence. "I tried. You go a little mad, every day, and it gets worse and worse until you forget what it is to be human."

Aegon didn't move, and Jon waited as the silence stretched between them. "I wanted you to come," he said. "But you aren't the first man named Jon to betray me." Then his brother walked away from him into his bed chamber, and quietly closed the door.

Jon stared after him. Jon was no fool; he trusted Aegon no more than Aegon trusted him. Yet Aegon had been open about his own hesitancies, he had given Jon no true grounds for dislike, and he had himself admitted that distrust was only to be expected between two stranger-brothers, one a king and the other a prince of the realm. Jon had wasted years fearing phantom daemons, he knew that … but. When he had been Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, he had opened the ledgers left by Jeor Mormont and had read the histories of the men he commanded. Jon knew the darkness in men's souls. There was something in his brother that made the blood run cold in his veins. He flexed his unscarred right hand and touched Longclaw at his side.


End file.
